VATICAN - THE CHURCH CAN DO MUCH TO MAKE GLOBALISATION MORE HUMAN: SAID PRESIDENT OF PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE CARDINAL RENATO MARTINO, ADDRESSING INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON LEO XIII

Friday, 5 December 2003

Vatican City (Fides) – The urgent need to give meaning to globalisation in order to overcome its many ambiguities and to put it more at the service of mankind was underlined by the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace Cardinal Renato R. Martino, when he spoke on “The Teaching of the Church in Globalisation» at a two day convention on Pope Leo XIII organised by Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, in Rome 5 and 6 December
Cardinal Martino is convinced that the Church can do much in this regard since she works to unite humanity putting at the centre the human person, created in the image of God and gifted with transcendent dignity. The Church promotes a vision of globalisation as sharing, that is valorising differences but in unity. To share means in fact to be different but starting from basic unity and tending towards basic unity. This is why the Church has always been in the front line to support the cultural and national identities of peoples, never absolutising them but instead putting them in relation with a vaster identity, that is, membership in the human race.
Furthermore the Church, as John Paul II never tires of saying, stresses the urgent need to globalise solidarity seeking progressive convergence towards a “common moral code”. “This does not mean – Cardinal Martino explained, quoting the Pope – one dominant socio-economic system or one culture which would impose on ethics its own values and criteria. It is in the human person as such, in universal humanity created by the hands of God, that we must search for norms for social life. This research is indispensable if we are to guarantee that globalisation is not just another name for absolute relativisation of values and the homogenisation of life styles and cultures.”
“The Church – the President of Justice and Peace concluded – accompanies humanity in the discovery of the human aspect of globalisation. She does so to ensure that increasingly behind the problem of patents for genetically modified organisms we see the face of African farmers, behind lists of figures on a screen we see small savers in developing economies, behind satellites and optic cables we see the many young people in poor countries who could be trained in new technology, behind the sophisticated charts of the new economy we see businesses as communities of persons and behind flexible working hours working families. This is the Christian position for governable globalisation”. (S.L.) (Fides Service 5/12/2003 – lines 32; words 433)


Share: