Pope urges global action on economy

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday released an encyclical tackling the moral dimensions of the global economic crisis, just in time for the Group of Eight industrialized nations summit that begins Wednesday in L’Aquila, Italy.

Called “Caritas in Veritate,” or “Charity in Truth,” it calls for selfless love, truth and justice in a globalized society where great gulfs exist between the haves and have-nots.

“If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them,” the pontiff wrote. “To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it.”

Benedict broke new ground with a suggestion that the United Nations be reformed and possibly replaced by a “true world political authority” that would act as a watchdog on international finance.

If all countries are agreed, the pope wrote, this unnamed organization would establish a “political, juridical and economic order” that would “manage the global economy to revive economies hit by the crisis.”

It also would “bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace” and “guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration.”

University of Dayton theology professor Vincent J. Miller said the pope was “taking seriously” radical new situations presented by globalization.

“In the past, the nation-state has kept the market tethered to the moral good,” he said. “He faces that new situation squarely and offers some positive solutions.”

The Very Rev. David M. O’Connell, president of Catholic University, said the pope has been working on the encyclical for several years, intending to release it in 2007 for the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical “Populorum Progressio” on world economics.

When the release of “Caritas in Veritate” got delayed, Benedict added current references to the world economic crisis.

“We have all come to expect brilliance from him, and this is not an exception,” Father O’Connell said. “It will be a source of wisdom for many years to come. It’s jampacked with deep and profound theology. A lot of material is not new, but he’s adapting clearly and poignantly to current issues.”

In much of the document, the pontiff takes the side of poor countries, which are often repositories of oil, gold, diamonds and various rare minerals valued around the globe.

“The stockpiling of natural resources, which in many cases are found in the poor countries themselves, gives rise to exploitation and frequent conflicts between and within nations,” Benedict wrote. “These conflicts are often fought on the soil of those same countries, with a heavy toll of death, destruction and further decay.

“The international community has an urgent duty to find institutional means of regulating the exploitation of non-renewable resources, involving poor countries in the process … . ”

The nearly 150-page letter to the world’s Catholic bishops also tackles issues ranging from world hunger, global markets and outsourcing labor overseas to investors’ responsibilities, religious persecution and the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that promote sterilization of poor women. It defies political categories, shifting from an almost Marxist paean to the common worker to cheerleading rich countries for spearheading projects that have helped the world’s poor.

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