Pope says truth, love, justice needed to overcome injustice

(May 16, 2011) Truth, love and justice are indispensable in order to overcome the scourge of social and cultural inequality plaguing our world today. Pope Benedict XVI said this on Monday while speaking to participants in a 3-day international congress marking the 50th anniversary of ‘Mater et Magistra”, Pope John XXIII’s 1961 encyclical on Christianity and social progress. The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has organized the May 16-18 congress on the theme of justice and globalization. Pope Benedict lamented about how the poor bear the brunt of unequal distribution of wealth in the world today. Equally disturbing, he said, are issues related to the financial system, which after a very acute crisis, has returned with even greater frenzy in endless speculation in granting credit. Pope Benedict also denounced this harmful form of speculation especially with regard to essential goods such as food, water and land that exacerbate the grave insecurity that the poor are already in. He said the growing cost of primary sources of energy that is leading to search for alternative sources, is sometimes dictated exclusively by short-term economic interests, and thus ends up with harmful consequences on the environment and man himself. The social question today, the Pope said, is the issue of equal distribution of material and immaterial resources and of the globalization of real, social and participatory democracy.