WHAT is the link between call centres, fast food and His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI?Until October 18th, the answer would have been, “None.”
But in a message that day the pope launched an attack on the short-term job contracts that underpin many modern enterprises.
Barely reported outside Italy, his words will nevertheless filter down to believers and may have a long-term effect.
Contracts that do not ensure stable employment, said the pope, are among the “ethical and social emergencies capable of undermining the stability [of society] and seriously compromising its future”.
His objection was not that these contracts brought rock-bottom wages and long hours, but that they “did not permit young people to build a family”.
Ever since 1891, when Pope Leo XIII published his encyclical “Rerum Novarum”, the Vatican has steered an often wobbly course between the whirlpool of socialism and the rock of capitalism.
Benedict's remarks seem an abrupt tack towards the froth and spume. Perhaps aware of the risks, Monsignor Giovanni D'Ercole, a senior Vatican official, insists that the pope was not attacking specific legislation but rather unstable forms of employment that were obstacles to the “true well-being of humanity”.
Gauging the impact of papal pronouncements is not easy. Millions of otherwise dutiful Catholics ignore the Vatican's teaching on contraception.
But Benedict's opinions could act as a hidden brake on labour reform in southern Europe and countries like Poland, Hungary and Ireland, where the Catholic church is influential.
Paolo Ferrero, Italy's social-affairs minister, has already expressed his approval and will no doubt use Benedict's comments in a campaign to roll back a 2003 labour-market reform.
In South America they will be welcomed by leaders such as Hugo Chávez.
The devout, though, may also care to reflect on the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16).
This describes how an employer recruited labourers on (very) short-term contracts and paid them equally, regardless of their hours.
The evangelist did not demur.
But Benedict, presumably, would not have approved.
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