Gattamelata: “let us have the courage to change our viewpoint”‎

May 8, 2014: “THE GOOD SOCIETY AND THE FUTURE OF JOBS” Can solidarity and ‎fraternity be part of business decisions? Is the theme of a 3-day meeting that began on Thursday in the Vatican. The initiative is organized by the Vatican’s Foundation Centesimus Annus – Pro Pontifice, that aims to study and implement the social teachings of the Church. ‎ “At this difficult time, when more and more people and families lose their jobs, ‎generating new social inequalities, we need a perspective that opens a new horizon ‎of reality,” said the Foundation secretary Massimo Gattamelata at the inauguration of the conference. “This ‎new horizon can be represented by three elements: creativity, community love and ‎practical sense,” he said. ‎
Pope Francis, in the speech addressed to the Foundation on May 25th, 2013, had ‎underlined that: “We have forgotten and are still forgetting that over and above ‎business, logic and the parameters of the market there is the human being and there ‎is something that is due to men and women in as much as they are human beings by ‎virtue of their profound dignity: the possibility of living a dignified life and of actively ‎participating in the common good. Benedict XVI had reminded that precisely ‎because it is human all human activity, including economic activity, must be ethically ‎structured and governed (cf. Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate, n. 36). ‎
These are important thoughts – continues the Secretary General – which prompt ‎them to acknowledge that work can no longer be considered an end to itself, a mere ‎marketable good but should look at it as an instrument of participation in God’s ‎creative work.‎