Pope's Address to Centesimus Annus Foundation

Vatican City, 25 May 2013: The current economic and social crisis adds urgency to this "rethink" and underlines even more the truth and relevance of the social teaching of the Church, said Pope Francis while addressing the members of the Centesimus Annus Foundation in the Clementine Hall in the Vatican on Saturday, at the end of the International Conference of the foundation on the theme "Rethinking solidarity for use: the challenges of the twenty-first century. Citing the encyclical ‘Laborem exercens’, Pope Francis said that unemployment and job loss are a phenomenon that is spreading like wildfire in large areas of the West and that is spreading poverty at an alarming rates.

The Foundation Centesimus Annus was established by Blessed John Paul II twenty years ago, and bears the name of the encyclical that he signed at the centenary of Rerum Novarum. Its sphere of reflection and action is therefore of the Social Doctrine of the Church, to which the Popes of the last century have contributed in many ways and Pope Benedict XVI, in particular with the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, recalled Pope Francis.

The Pontiff thanked the efforts of the Foundation in deepening and spreading the knowledge of the Social Doctrine, with its courses and publications. Reflecting on the theme of their conference, Pope Francis said that solidarity is a core value of the Social Doctrine, as reminded by Blessed John Paul II. According to Pope Francis "rethink" means two things: first, combine the teaching with the socio-economic development, which always presents new aspects, and secondly, to "rethink" means to deepen, reflect further, to emerge all the fruitfulness of a value - solidarity, in this case - that draws deeply from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which contains inexhaustible potential.

The Pontiff reiterated that there is nothing worse than material poverty, which makes impossible to earn a living and deprives the dignity of labor. Something is drastically wrong in the entire planet. Hence the need to "rethink solidarity" is no longer as simple assistance to the poor, but as a global rethinking of the whole system, such as finding ways to reform it and correct it in a manner consistent with fundamental human rights of all men.
The current crisis, explained the Pontiff, is not only economic and financial but is rooted in an anthropological and ethical crisis. Following the idols of power, profit, money, over and above the value of the human person, has become a basic rule of operation and decisive criterion of organization. And it often forget that above the business logic and parameters of the market, there is a human being and there is something that is due to man as man, by virtue of his profound dignity: to offer the opportunity to live with dignity and participate actively in the common good.
Benedict XVI reminded us that every human activity, including the economic one, just because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner. We must return to the centrality of man, to a more ethical activities and human relationships, without the fear of losing something, concluded the Pope.
Source: VR Sedoc