FOUNDATION PREPARING JUBILEE CONGRESS ON ETHICS AND FINANCE

VATICAN CITY, SEP 11, 1999 (VIS) - This morning at Castelgandolfo, the Holy Father welcomed the participants in a meeting promoted by the "Centesimus Annus - Pro Pontefice" Foundation, currently meeting in the Vatican to prepare an international congress on "Ethics and Finance" during the 2000 Jubilee Year, within the framework of the Jubilee of the World of Labor.

The Pope highlighted that, "within the pervasive phenomenon of globalization, which marks the current historical moment," there is the "so-called 'financialiazation' of the economy. ... This phenomenon poses new and difficult questions, even under an ethical profile." One of these questions, he remarked, is "the problem of the relationship between wealth produced and work, given that today it is possible to rapidly create great wealth without a quantitative link to the work undertaken."

To better direct economies to work for the common good, and not that of a few, the Holy Father suggested that those working in the field of finance could themselves "prepare codes of ethics or behavior which are binding on the sector. ... Leaders of the international community ... could then adopt suitable juridical instruments to face crucial situations." In particular, he added, "Christians who work in the economic and financial sectors, are called to find possible ways to actuate this duty of justice."

The Pope then pointed out that the Church, through her social doctrine, has always "been careful to be the guardian of human rights, with special attention for the poor. ... (The Church) is aware that, 'even if the economy and moral discipline, each in its own sphere, rest on their own principles, it would be erroneous to affirm that the economic order and the moral order are thus disparate and foreign, one to the other."

Saying that the processes of globalization "do not have per se ethically negative connotations," he warned, nonetheless, against progress which could "generate, and in fact has already produced, ambivalent or decidedly negative consequences, especially damaging to the poor."

What is needed is "a sense of global justice ... which takes into consideration the structural interdependence of relations between men beyond national borders. In the meantime it would be opportune to support and encourage those projects of 'ethical finance', 'micro credit' and 'commercial equality and solidarity' which are within the reach of everyone."

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