The Common Good Is the Object of Economics

May 28 -- Two days after the leader of the General Confederation of Italian Industry (Confindustria) had launched an ideological crusade in favor of ``free market,'' Pope Benedict XVI reminded the Young Entrepreneurs of Confindustria that the common good, and not profit, is the purpose of economic enterprise.

"It is indispensable that the ultimate reference of any economic intervention is the Common Good and the satisfaction of the legitimate aspirations of the human being. In other words, human life and its values must always be the principle and the aim of economy," the Pope said on May 26, addressing Confindustria's Young Entrepreneurs led by Matteo Colaninno. "Even at the moment of deep crisis," the Pope added, the criterion governing the entrepreneur's choices cannot be the mere search for a larger profit. Quoting from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, the Pope called labor "the most precious wealth of the company.... It is necessary that labor become again the framework where man can accomplish his potentialities, implementing personal capacities and ingenuity, and it depends largely on you, entrepreneurs, to create the most favorable conditions to make that happen."

In particular, young people must be given well-paid jobs, the Pope recommended: "In order to build the future with hope, young people must be able to rely on a reliable source of income for themselves and their loved ones."

Finally, the Pope counterposed a critical assessment of globalization, to the fanatic apology proffered by Confindustria's leader Luca Cordero di Montezemolo.

The Pope said of globalization, that "if on the one hand it holds out hopes for a more widespread participation in development and distribution of welfare thanks to the redistribution of production on a world scale," on the other "it also presents various risks associated with new aspects of commercial and financial relations, which tend towards an increase in the gap between the economic wealth of the few and the growing poverty of the many. It is vital, as my venerated predecessor John Paul II so incisively said, 'to ensure a globalization in solidarity, a globalization without marginalization.'"