Pope to UN: Resist the economy of exclusion, serve the poor
(Vatican Radio ) Pope Francis met with executives from the United Nations Agencies,
Funds and Programmes on Friday, led by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Emer McCarthy
reports:
Speaking to
the men and women who manage the UN’s vast network of humanitarian offices, he urged
them to challenge “all forms of injustice” and resist the “economy of exclusion”,
the “throwaway culture” and the “culture of death” which nowadays – he said – “sadly
risk becoming passively accepted”.
Reflecting on the UN’s target for
Future Sustainable Development Goals, he questioned whether in today’s world,
a spirit of solidarity and sharing guide all our thoughts and actions:
“Future
Sustainable Development Goals must therefore be formulated and carried out with generosity
and courage, so that they can have a real impact on the structural causes of poverty
and hunger, attain more substantial results in protecting the environment, ensure
dignified and productive labor for all, and provide appropriate protection for the
family, which is an essential element in sustainable human and social development”.
The
Pope also pointed the executives to the Gospel story of Zacchaeus the Tax collector,
as an example of how it’s never too late to correct injustice
“Today, in concrete
terms, an awareness of the dignity of each of our brothers and sisters whose life
is sacred and inviolable from conception to natural death must lead us to share with
complete freedom the goods which God’s providence has placed in our hands, material
goods but also intellectual and spiritual ones, and to give back generously and lavishly
whatever we may have earlier unjustly refused to others”.
Below please
find the full text of Pope Francis’ address to the UN delegation
Mr
Secretary General, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to welcome you, Mr Secretary-General
and the leading executive officers of the Agencies, Funds and Programmes of the United
Nations and specialized Organizations, as you gather in Rome for the biannual meeting
for strategic coordination of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board. It
is significant that today’s meeting takes place shortly after the solemn canonization
of my predecessors, Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. The new saints inspire us by
their passionate concern for integral human development and for understanding between
peoples. This concern was concretely expressed by the numeous visits of John Paul
II to the Organizations headquartered in Rome and by his travels to New York, Geneva,
Vienna, Nairobi and The Hague. I thank you, Mr Secretary-General, for your cordial
words of introduction. I thank all of you, who are primarily responsible for the international
system, for the great efforts being made to ensure world peace, respect for human
dignity, the protection of persons, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, and
harmonious economic and social development. The results of the Millennium Development
Goals, especially in terms of education and the decrease in extreme poverty, confirm
the value of the work of coordination carried out by this Chief Executives Board.
At the same time, it must be kept in mind that the world’s peoples deserve and expect
even greater results. An essential principle of management is the refusal to be
satisfied with current results and to press forward, in the conviction that those
gains are only consolidated by working to achieve even more. In the case of global
political and economic organization, much more needs to be achieved, since an important
part of humanity does not share in the benefits of progress and is in fact relegated
to the status of second-class citizens. Future Sustainable Development Goals must
therefore be formulated and carried out with generosity and courage, so that they
can have a real impact on the structural causes of poverty and hunger, attain more
substantial results in protecting the environment, ensure dignified and productive
labor for all, and provide appropriate protection for the family, which is an essential
element in sustainable human and social development. Specifically, this involves challenging
all forms of injustice and resisting the “economy of exclusion”, the “throwaway culture”
and the “culture of death” which nowadays sadly risk becoming passively accepted. With
this in mind, I would like to remind you, as representatives of the chief agencies
of global cooperation, of an incident which took place two thousand years ago and
is recounted in the Gospel of Saint Luke (19:1-10). It is the encounter between Jesus
Christ and the rich tax collector Zacchaeus, as a result of which Zacchaeus made a
radical decision of sharing and justice, because his conscience had been awakened
by the gaze of Jesus. This same spirit should be at the beginning and end of all political
and economic activity. The gaze, often silent, of that part of the human family which
is cast off, left behind, ought to awaken the conscience of political and economic
agents and lead them to generous and courageous decisions with immediate results,
like the decision of Zacchaeus. Does this spirit of solidarity and sharing guide all
our thoughts and actions? Today, in concrete terms, an awareness of the dignity
of each of our brothers and sisters whose life is sacred and inviolable from conception
to natural death must lead us to share with complete freedom the goods which God’s
providence has placed in our hands, material goods but also intellectual and spiritual
ones, and to give back generously and lavishly whatever we may have earlier unjustly
refused to others. The account of Jesus and Zacchaeus teaches us that above and
beyond economic and social systems and theories, there will always be a need to promote
generous, effective and practical openness to the needs of others. Jesus does not
ask Zacchaeus to change jobs nor does he condemn his financial activity; he simply
inspires him to put everything, freely yet immediately and indisputably, at the service
of others. Consequently, I do not hesitate to state, as did my predecessors (cf. JOHN
PAUL II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 42-43; Centesimus Annus, 43; BENEDICT XVI, Caritas
in Veritate, 6; 24-40), that equitable economic and social progress can only be attained
by joining scientific and technical abilities with an unfailing commitment to solidarity
accompanied by a generous and disinterested spirit of gratuitousness at every level.
A contribution to this equitable development will also be made both by international
activity aimed at the integral human development of all the world’s peoples and by
the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the State, as well as indispensable
cooperation between the private sector and civil society. Consequently, while encouraging
you in your continuing efforts to coordinate the activity of the international agencies,
which represents a service to all humanity, I urge you to work together in promoting
a true, worldwide ethical mobilization which, beyond all differences of religious
or political convictions, will spread and put into practice a shared ideal of fraternity
and solidarity, especially with regard to the poorest and those most excluded. Invoking
divine guidance on the work of your Board, I also implore God’s special blessing for
you, Mr Secretary-General, for the Presidents, Directors and Secretaries General present
among us, and for all the personnel of the United Nations and the other international
Agencies and Bodies, and their respective families.