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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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26/05/2009 19:45
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When the Pope speaks
on economic policy...

by Luigi Accattoli
Translated from

26 May 2009


Dear editor, the other day the Pope, and yesterday, Cardinal Bagnasco, spoke out anew on the jobs crisis in Italy, about which last week Cardinals Poletto, Tettamanzi and Sepe spoke, in Turin, Milan and Naples, respectively.

And we can bet that in the following days we will hear more voices, this being the week preceding the nationwide Church collection to be carried out in all the Churches of Italy to help Italian victims of the economic crisis.

What is striking about the calls by the Pope and Cardinal Bagnasco is the specificity of their appeals.

Benedict XVI spoke of 'job precariousness', of those who are now availing of unemployment insurance [cassa-lavorazione], those who have been dismissed from their jobs outright, and young people "who find it difficult to find any worthy work activity'.

Cardinal Bagnasco went into greater detail, referring to 'flexible work positions', make-do measures that are 'too modest' for those who are now out of work or who are at immediate risk of losing their jobs, the 'established jobs' which mass dismissals have started to affect.

How do men of the Church now venture into the specifics of the unemployment crisis instead of limiting themselves to general terms? To explain this, we must look at what they are learning from the assistential initiatives that they have carried out so far.

For the Pope, what underlies the concreteness of his interventions is the work that he has been doing towards the publication of a social encyclical.

Cardinal Sepe recently established in Naples a 'bank for the poor', donating his annual salary and his personal savings to start off a venture that can give 'micro-credits' to the needy. [Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladesh professor, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for the 'micro-credit' concept he started in 1976 - with a modest $27 of his own money - of village banks that give small loans requiring no collateral to people in need - an idea that spread across the Third World to now serve some 130 million people who have registered an amazing global repayment rate of 97%.]

Cardinal Tettamanzi likewise gave a personal contribution to a Family-Work Fund in Milan that has collected at least 4.3 million euros in four months.

Similar initiatives have been taken by bishops to a smaller degree elsewhere in Italy, but they are all together in the Church's nationwide plan to dedicate the collections at Mass on Pentecost Sunday, May 31, to setting up a 'guarantee fund for families in difficulty' to be called 'Prestito della Speranza' (credit of hope).

Primary beneficiaries of the fund would be families with at least three children, whose breadwinners have lost their job. It is the biggest social initiative ever undertaken by the CEI.

It is a daring move: it is estimated that to effectively meet its objectives, the fund should have an initial investment of 30 million euros. The challenge will test the CEI's organizational capacity and its economic common sense.

And then, there is the inquiry that was conducted by the Pope to prepare his social encyclical in order to account for the current global crisis, leading to the delay in its publication.

From what is known, the Pope will call on the political and economic leadership of the international community to move in two parallel directions to help the poorest populations in the world who live in hunger, and which threaten to grow by hundreds of millions as the current crisis continues.

The first direction is towards global mechanisms for economic regulation, in which decisions are based not only on the interests of the developed countries but on how to guarantee economic opportunity for all peoples.

The second direction is 'to make the poor a priority' - as the Pope said in his message last January 1 - in an act of global solidarity which would favor investments in economic undertakings primarily addressed towards helping the neediest, a goal to which Benedict XVI would invite all concerned to work for.






Accattoli has also written an extensive account and analysis of the Pope's Holy Land pilgrimage - which will take me some time to translate - for the monthly journal of the Italian clergy, RIVISTA DEL CLERO ITALIANO, from the Catholic University of Milan's publications department.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/05/2009 19:46]
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