Pope Benedict XVI has blamed global poverty and the food crisis on the world’s richest nations and their “unbridled pursuit of wealth and short term profit”.In a message for World Peace Day on January 1, the Pope wrote a 17-page missive tittled 'Fighting Poverty to Build Peace' to heads of state, government and international organisations.
He called for a “common code of ethics” between nations to narrow the gap between the “haves and the have nots”.
“Objectively, the most important function of finance is to sustain the possibility of long-term investment and hence of development.”
In comparison to this, he held up the current economic crisis as evidence of “how financial activity is only focused on itself without any consideration of the long term, the common good.
“The unbridled pursuit of wealth for wealth’s sake creates a risk that in the world the rich will live in an ivory tower surrounded by a desert of poverty and degradation.
“The recent crisis demonstrates how financial activity can at times be completely turned in on itself, lacking any long-term consideration of the common good.”
He sounded out a sharp warning to wealthy nations who thought they could escape the repercussions of their short-term thinking: “Finance limited in this way to the short and very short-term becomes dangerous for everyone, even for those who benefit when the markets perform well.”
The letter sees an expansion of his previous criticism of the world's banking system, holding the irresponsible wealthy nations responsible for the world’s worst ills.
The Pope’s heavy criticism did not stop there. He called for disarmament and a fight against world hunger and launched an offensive on campaigns to reduce birth rates in underdeveloped countries.
He said: “There are international campaigns afoot to reduce birth rates, sometimes using methods that respect neither the dignity of the woman, nor the right of parents to choose responsibly how many children to have.
“Graver still, these methods often fail to respect even the right to life. The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty, actually constitutes the destruction of the poorest of all human beings.”
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(Source: RI)