ECONOMY, ETHICS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

VATICAN CITY, APR 5, 1993 (VIS) - Archbishop Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, spoke this afternoon at 4:30 in the basilica of the Most Holy Apostles on "Economy, Ethics and Sustainable Development," as part of a celebration promoted by the Father Luigi Di Liegro Foundation, named for the late former director of Caritas in Rome.

The archbishop noted that "if development does not reach all peoples, it is not efficacious because it does not include the real contribution of many people and because the areas of underdevelopment, in the long run, cause imbalances, thus upsetting the positive dynamics of development itself."

Archbishop Martino, the former Holy See permanent observer to the United Nations, was head of the Holy See delegation to the 1992 conference on Development in Rio de Janeiro, as well as to a more recent world summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1992, the delegation succeeded in inserting into the conference Declaration an important ethical principle, which has guided all Holy See representatives to international conferences, namely that the human person must be at the center of all human activity, and of all that governments do and decide. The Rio Declaration affirmed: "Human beings must be at the center of concerns for sustainable development. They have the right to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature."

In today's speech, the archbishop said that for development "to be sustainable, it must find the just equilibrium between economic, social and environmental objectives, with the aim of assuring today's comforts without compromising those of future generations."

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