Vatican City, 27 February 2016 (VIS) –
This morning in the Paul VI Hall Pope Francis received in audience
seven thousand Italian members of Confindustria (the General
Confederation of Italian Industry). It was the first encounter in the
Vatican in the history of the association, and took place within the
context of the Jubilee Year of Mercy. The Holy Father observed that
with this meeting, the men and women of Italian business confirm
their commitment to contributing to a more just society, to
reflecting together on the ethics of business, and to strengthening
their attention to values, the "spinal column" of projects
that offer a concrete alternative to the consumerist model of profit
at any cost.
The theme "working together"
inspires collaboration, sharing and preparing the way for relations
regulated by a sense of joint responsibility. "In the complex
world of business, working together means investing in projects able
to involve those who are often forgotten or neglected, especially
families. … And, alongside them, we cannot forget the weakest and
most marginalised categories, such as the elderly, who may still have
the resources and energy for active collaboration, but are too often
discarded as useless and unproductive. Then there are potential
workers, especially the young who, imprisoned by uncertainty or long
periods of unemployment, do not receive offers of work providing them
with not only an honest salary but also the dignity that they are
often deprived of".
Working together means "basing
work not on the solitary genius of an individual, but on the
collaboration of many. It means, in other words, building a network
to bring to the fore the gifts of all, without however neglecting the
unique qualities of each person. At the centre of every business,
therefore, is the person: not abstract, ideal or theoretical, but a
real person with dreams, needs, hopes and hardships. … Faced with
the many barriers of injustice, solitude, distrust and suspicion that
continue to be built in our times, the world of work, in which you
are on the front line, is required to take courageous steps so that
encountering each other and working together is not merely a slogan,
but rather a plan for the present and the future".
The Holy Father reminded those present
of their "noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and
improving our world", for which they are called to be builders
of the common good and promoters of a "new humanism of work".
"You are called to safeguard
professionalism, and at the same time to pay attention to the
conditions in which work is carried out", he said. "May you
always be guided by justice, which refuses the shortcuts of
favouritism, and the dangerous deviations of dishonesty and easy
compromise. May the supreme law always be attention to the dignity of
others, an absolute and indispensable value. May this aim of altruism
always distinguish your work: it will lead you to refuse
categorically the infringement of the dignity of the person in the
name of productive demands, which mask individualistic
short-sightedness, sad selfishness and thirst for profit".
The Pope concluded by urging the
members of Confindustria to represent, instead, a business open to
the "broader meaning of life", allowing them "truly to
serve the common good, by striving to increase the goods of this
world and to make them more accessible to all", so that it is
"not insensitive to the gaze of those in need. This is truly
possible, provided that the simple proclamation of economic freedom
does not prevail over the real freedom of man and his rights, that
the market is not absolute, but rather honours the needs of justice
and, in the final analysis, of the dignity of the person. There is no
freedom without justice and no justice without respect for the
dignity of every person".
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