Pope: ‘Miracle’ of cooperation
based on relationships not profit
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| The Pope with members of the Confederation of Italian Cooperatives (Vatican Media) |
“The ‘miracle’ of cooperation is a team strategy that opens
a gap in the wall of an indifferent crowd that excludes the weakest.” Those
were Pope Francis’ words on Saturday to 7,000 members of the Confederation of
Italian Cooperatives, on the 100th anniversary of its foundation.
The Pope told the Confederation in the Paul VI Hall on
Saturday that its cooperative model, corrects certain tendencies associated
with collectivism and statism, which at times are lethal to private initiative;
and at the same time, it curbs the temptations of individualism and selfishness
associated with liberalism. The reason for this, the Pope pointed out, is
because it’s a model “inspired by the social doctrine of the Church”.
True wealth is in relationships
The Pontiff underlined to those gathered that, a “vision of
cooperation, based on relationships and not on profit, runs counter to the
mentality of the world. Only by discovering that our true wealth is in
relationships and not mere material goods, he said, can we find alternative
ways of living in a society that is not governed by the god of money, an idol
who deludes and then leaves one increasingly inhuman and unjust.”
Overcoming loneliness with cooperation
The most important and obvious advantage of cooperation, the
Pope stressed, “is overcoming the loneliness that turns life into hell. When
man feels alone, he experiences hell. When, on the other hand, he feels that he
is not being abandoned, then it is possible to face all kinds of difficulties
and weariness…” “For this reason”, Pope Francis continued, “he needs
initiatives that allow him to face together with others what life imposes.
Walking and working together we experience the great miracle of hope:
everything seems possible again. In this sense, cooperation is a way of making
hope concrete in the lives of people.”
Solidarity, said Pope Francis, allows people to strive for a
fair wage; it helps farmers weakened by the markets to be part of a community
that strengthens and supports them; it permits a lonely fisherman to join a
group of colleagues…”
“The "miracle" of cooperation is a team strategy
that opens a gap in the wall of an indifferent crowd that excludes the weakest,
the Pope said, adding, “a society that becomes a wall, made up of the mass of
many individuals who do not think and act as people, is not able to appreciate
the fundamental value of relationships.”
Women and cooperative projects
Speaking in particular about women in society, he said that,
“it is above all women who, in the global world, bear the brunt of material
poverty, social exclusion and cultural marginalisation. The issue of women, he
emphasized should once again be one of the priorities of future cooperative
projects.”
The Pope concluded by saying that, “we live in a world that
is taken in by the frenzy of possessing, and that struggles to walk as a
community. The work that you have been doing for a hundred years is:
relationships as opposed to individualism, teamwork as opposed to
self-interests, the common good as opposed to the interests of a few.”
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