Holy See's Permanent Observer: WTO deal "historic"

(Vatican Radio) The World Trade Organization reached its first ever trade reform deal since its creation in 1995 on Saturday morning at a meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali. The deal will lower trade barriers and ease the passage of goods through customs, actions which could boost the world economy by hundreds of billions of dollars and create more than 20 million jobs, mostly in developing countries.

“It is a historic agreement,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the World Trade Organization. He said it opens the way to the implementation of the Doha Agreement of 2001, which formalized the WTO’s goal to make globalization more inclusive and help the world's poor.

“What I find significant is there is a convergence of intent in what [the WTO] and these decisions of the Ministers of trade of the world have arrived at, with the Social Doctrine of the Church,” Archbishop Tomasi told Vatican Radio. “In fact, the Holy Father, Francis, has been quite clear in the last Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium in pointing out that the market is at the service of the human person.”

He said an added benefit is that it will renew trust in the international system.

“There is … a psychological and practical advantage as a result of the positive conclusion of this conference in supporting the international structures that are at the service of solidarity in today’s world,” Archbishop Tomasi said.

Listen to the interview by Alessandro Gisotti with Archbishop Tomasi: