Pope Tells Young Businessmen: The Common Good Is the Object of Economics

May 28, 2007 (LPAC)--Two days after the leader of the Italian Industrialists Association (Confindustria) had launched an ideological crusade in favor of the "free market," Pope Benedict XVI reminded a youth delegation from Confindustria that the common good, and not profit, is the purpose of economic enterprise.

"It is indispensable that the ultimate reference of any economic intervention is the Common Good and the satisfaction of the legitimate aspirations of the human being. In other words, human life and its values must always be the principle and the aim of economy," the Pope said on May 26, addressing Confindustria's youth delegation led by Matteo Colaninno.

"Even in a moment of deep crisis," the Pope added, "the criterion governing the entrepreneur's choices cannot be the mere promotion of a larger profit." Quoting from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, the Pope called labor "the most precious wealth of the company.... It is necessary that labor becomes again the framework where man can accomplish his potentialities, implementing personal capacities and ingenuity, and it depends largely on you, entrepreneurs, to create the most favorable conditions to make that happen."

In particular, young people must be given well-paid jobs, the Pope recommended. "To build their future with confidence, they must, in fact, rely on a solid support base for themselves and their beloved."

Finally, the Pope counterposed a critical assessment of globalization, to the fanatic apology for it given by Confindustria's leader Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. The Pope said that globalization "on one side feeds the hope of a more general participation to development and distribution of welfare thanks to the redistribution of production on a world scale," but "on the other side, it presents several risks connected to the new dimensions of trade and financial relationships, going in the direction of an increased gap between a few economically wealthy, and the growth of poverty for many."