|
United Nations could create economic body with 'real teeth,' economist says |
|
|
|
By Cindy Wooden - Catholic News Service
|
|
Tuesday, 14 July 2009 |
Pope Benedict XVI’s call for an international authority with “real teeth” to guide the global economy could be realized with the creation of a U.N. “socio-economic security council” to stand alongside the current Security Council dedicated to peacekeeping, said an economist who advises the Vatican.
Stefano Zamagni, a professor of economic policies at the University of
Bologna, Italy, and a consultant to the Pontifical Council for Justice
and Peace, spoke July 7 at the Vatican press conference held to present
Pope Benedict’s encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (“Charity in Truth”).
Pope Benedict wrote that the current financial crisis demonstrated just
how little control national governments have over the process of
globalization and the interdependence of the world’s economy.
The pope called for the reform of the United Nations, as well as of
international bodies involved in economics and finance. The reform, he
said, should help ensure that the world’s poorer countries have a voice
in economic decisions impacting everyone. The reform should aim to
revive ailing economies, protect the environment, provide food security
and promote peace more effectively, he said.
Zamagni said the fact that the pope spoke about the need to include a
wide range of voices in decision-making and to uphold the principle of
subsidiarity — that decisions on local matters should be made at the
local level — made it clear that he is not proposing “a kind of
superstate,” but wants internationally recognized institutions to have
the power to intervene when lives are at stake.
The United Nations, he said, has “a security council for military
affairs. Why don’t we have one for socio-economic affairs? If we did,
the crisis of 2007-2008, which saw the price of grains triple despite
an increased supply,” might have been resolved more quickly.
The increase in grain prices triggered food emergencies throughout the
world’s poorer countries and has been identified as one of the first
signs of what became the global financial crisis.
Call for reform
Archbishop Giampaolo Crepaldi of Trieste, Italy, who served as
secretary of the justice and peace council until July 4, said the
Vatican did not have a concrete plan to propose for the reorganization,
and it was not the Vatican’s place to design a new system; it simply
was encouraging U.N. member states to get serious about reforming the
institution.
Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace and the former Vatican observer at the United
Nations, said every pope since Pope John XXIII had called for a reform
of the United Nations to make it more efficient and more effective.
Cardinal Martino told journalists that “Caritas in Veritate” marked a
further step in the church’s recognition of its obligation to promote
the salvation and well-being of all people and its efforts to
“guarantee Christianity has the ‘right of citizenship’ in building
human society.”
Catholic social teaching, he said, uses the unchanging principles of
the Gospel and applies them to the ever-changing situation in which
peoples and societies find themselves.
“The church does not have technical solutions to propose, as ‘Caritas
in Veritate’ itself reminds us, but it has the obligation to enlighten
human history with the light of truth and with the warmth of the love
of Jesus Christ,” he said.
“This is not an encyclical on the economic crisis,” he said, but
because it speaks of the various forces involved in promoting or
retarding development, it had to address the crisis.
“In a year or two, the crisis will be over, but the points of the encyclical will still be valid,” Cardinal Martino said.
Not political
Cardinal Paul Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum,
which promotes and coordinates Catholic charitable giving, said the
social doctrine of the church is not a political program because the
church is not interested in creating “a theocracy where the valid
principles of faith” are imposed on believers and nonbelievers alike.
“Instead, the social doctrine commits Christians, first of all, to
incarnate their faith” in the way they live and act in the political,
social and economic spheres, he said.
Archbishop Crepaldi said the central message of the pope’s encyclical
is that people have a vocation, a call from God, to act righteously in
the economy and at work, in their families and communities and to work
for the common good in all those areas.
 |
|
Sign up for our eNewsletter and get
Show/hide comment form