Pope Francis: economy must have human person at its heart

Pope Francis: economy must have human person at its heart

(Vatican Radio) The director of La Stampa’s Vatican Insider magazine, Andrea Tornielli, has teamed with the Italian daily’s Vatican beat reporter, Giacomo Galeazzi, to write a book profiling the social teaching of the Church under the direction of Pope Francis. The Italian language volume, titled Papa Francesco. Questa economia uccide – “Pope Francis: this economy kills” – closes with an interview with the Holy Father, which the authors conducted in October of 2014, ample excerpts of which appeared in the Sunday edition of La Stampa just ahead of the book’s scheduled January 13^th release date.

In the published excerpts, Pope Francis focuses on the human cost of the present world economic order, and repeats his call for Christians to have great care for the poor and the marginalized, explaining that such care is essential to living the Gospel and to making Christ’s Church credible. “I recognize that globalization has helped many people to lift themselves out of poverty,” says Pope Francis in response to a question regarding the current state and direction of the global economy, “but it has condemned many others to starve.” The Pope’s answer goes on to say, “It is true that in absolute terms the world's wealth has grown, but inequality has also increased and new [forms of] poverty have arisen.”

The Holy Father goes on to reiterate the connection he sees to this throw-away culture and an economic system – any economic system – from the center of which the human person is displaced and money established as the object of idolatry.   “[Then] men and women are reduced to mere instruments of a social and economic system characterized, indeed dominated by deep imbalances,” he says, adding that the throw-away culture also leads to abortion and euthanasia, and thus severs the connection of the present generation from both its past and its future. Nevertheless, “We do not consider this situation as irreversible, we do not resign ourselves,” says Pope Francis.

Rather, as Christians, “We try to build a society and an economy where man and his own good, and not money, are at the center.”

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