WEALTH CREATION becomes “an inescapable duty, which must be kept in mind if the fight against material poverty is to be effective in the long term”, Pope Benedict XVI said in his message for World Day of Peace yesterday.
He said that “policies which place too much emphasis on assistance underlie many of the failures in providing aid to poor countries. Investing in the formation of people and developing a specific and well-integrated culture of enterprise would seem at present to be the right approach in the medium and long term.”
If economic activities “require a favourable context in order to develop, this must not distract attention from the need to generate revenue”, he said.
The pope continued: “The illusion that a policy of mere redistribution of existing wealth can definitively resolve the problem must be set aside. In a modern economy, the value of assets is utterly dependent on the capacity to generate revenue in the present and the future.”
He recalled “as my venerable predecessor Paul VI wisely observed, ‘the new name for peace is development’. States are therefore invited to reflect seriously on the underlying reasons for conflicts, often provoked by injustice, and to practise courageous self-criticism. If relations can be improved, it should be possible to reduce expenditure on arms. The resources saved could then be earmarked for development projects to assist the poorest and most needy individuals and peoples: efforts expended in this way would be efforts for peace within the human family.”
The current worldwide financial crisis “demonstrates how financial activity can at times be completely turned in on itself, lacking any long-term consideration of the common good. This lowering of the objectives of global finance to the very short term reduces its capacity to function as a bridge between the present and the future, and as a stimulus to the creation of new opportunities for production and for work in the long term. Finance limited in this way to the short and very short term becomes dangerous for everyone,” said the pontiff.
