VATICAN - “Economy and finance cannot be an end to themselves, they are simply a means, a tool. Their only goal is the human person and the full realisation of the human person in dignity ”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – “Today the world and Europe are experiencing a period of particularly serious economic and financial crisis. This period should not produce restrictions based solely on a strictly financial analysis. On the contrary, it should enable the Development Bank to show its originality by increasing social integration, management of the environment and development of public infrastructures with a social calling ”. This was the advice which the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, offered to participants at the forty-fifth annual Joint Meeting of the Council of Europe Development Bank, received in audience on 12 June.
The Pope emphasised in his discourse that the Church's Social Teaching offers “a positive contribution towards the promotion of the human person and society”, also in response to the present challenges facing Europe, and quoting from his most recent Encyclical, Caritas in veritate, he said: “The Church, following the example of Jesus, sees love of God and neighbour a force which can offer authentic energy able to irrigate social, juridical, cultural, political and economic environments. I stressed the fact that the relation between love and truth is, when properly lived, a dynamic force which regenerates inter-personal bonds and offers something authentically new in the direction of economic and financial life which it renews, at the service of the human person and human dignity for which these bonds exist. Economy and finance cannot be an end to themselves, they are simply a means, a tool. Their only goal is the human person and the full realisation of the human person in dignity. This is the only capital worth saving.”
After underlining that “in this capital we find the spiritual dimension of the human person”, Benedict XVI affirmed “Christianity has enabled Europe to understand that it is freedom, responsibility and ethics that impregnate its laws and corporative institutions. Marginalising Christianity - also by excluding its symbols - would deprive our continent of a fundamental resource which nourishes it and contributes to its true identity. ”.
Referring to the Development Bank, the Pontiff pointed out that although it is a "financial institution" and therefore an economic tool, it was founded to provide “a technical means for allowing solidarity. Solidarity which must be lived in fraternity. Fraternity is generous, not calculating. Perhaps these criteria need to be applied more in the Bank's internal decisions and external actions. Fraternity creates spaces for gratuitous action which, although indispensable, is difficult to envisage when efficiency and profit are the only criteria… the novelty would be to introduce a logic which renders the human person, and in particular families and persons truly in need, the focus and the purpose of the economy”. (SL) (Agenzia Fides 14/6/2010)