A former university professor, a member of the Salesians, as mild as the charisma of his order dictates, Mgr. Mario Toso has never shied away from controversy when he has found himself in the midst of it.
For example, it happened a year ago, when – with Berlusconi’s government still in power but rocked by scandals and the raging crisis – he invited Catholics to find new outlets for their political commitment and – why not – to think of setting up a new non-confessional but Christianity-inspired political party.
Or last October, when the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace – of which he is Secretary – published Reflections on the reform of the current financial and monetary systems which proposed, among other things, a ‘public authority with universal jurisdiction’, a proposal that angered many, even Catholics.
Mgr. Toso is not particularly ruffled and continues on his way, a way that – he explains – is none other than that set down by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate.
In an interview with Vatican Insider, he once again calls for the creation of ‘new political groups’, given that the party secretaries and party chairmen of the current political groups themselves are the first to blow the whistle on how ‘our parties should be refounded, even though they don’t seem easy to reform,’ and he makes it known that his ministry is committed to preparing reflections on energy in the run-up to the Rio+20 Conference which – together with his 'paper' on water, published in March – are part of the framework set up by the controversial document on global finance, i.e. to set up the essential conditions for the common good on a global scale.
The secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace vigorously defends the Reflections on the reform of monetary and financial systems against the accusation, made by various people including esteemed Catholics, that ‘it does not represent the line of the Holy See.’ Such reactions do not surprise Mgr. Toso: ‘Some categories proposed in that document are no longer in the public domain, not even in the Catholic world. The concept of a world political authority, for example, was misunderstood because the word “authority” was mistaken for “power”, absolute power, arbitrary power; because for many, political authority is not responsible for orienting economy and finance in line with achieving the common good.’
The global authority discussed in the document, he explains, ‘should be set up in a democratic way and it should be understood, first and foremost, as a moral body, in line with the law’; it should not blot out a country’s independence but, on the contrary, ‘strengthen it’ on the basis of ‘subsidiarity’.
For this Salesian cleric, the very fact that the document was so heavily criticised is proof of how it ‘was not irrelevant but rather touched a nerve’. And most of the criticisms, says Mgr. Toso, showed that the person making them ‘had not read either Caritas in Veritate or the Reflections carefully’. He goes on to stress that the document wished to make people think about a serious situation which does not seem to have been resolved yet and did not intend to impose ‘dogmatic’ solutions.
Back in Italy, Mgr. Toso sees the current government of technocrats ‘adopting a solution dictated by necessity – the necessity of a kind of politics that has shown it is not up to the task of tackling existing problems.’ However the fact remains that it is an ‘unusual’ solution that cannot go on forever: the technocrats have limited roles and we can’t expect them to solve ‘all the problems of a political society. The goals of economic development do not meet the goals of the common political good.’
In such a climate, the fact that there is still no sign of ‘an adequate and decisive recovery of politics’ mission, with corresponding lifestyles and suitable reforming decisions’ is not encouraging. For now, what seems to be prevailing is a reshuffling and a dissection of existing parties.
For Mgr. Toso, the realisation that parties are not ‘easily reformable’ – on the contrary, they are already ‘in pieces’ – must relaunch the urgent need to ‘build something new’ which in any case seems to be the message behind the decisions within certain parties that have announced the removal of current posts or a change in current leadership.
According to the Secretary of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, these are ‘signs that should be encouraged, along with others… However,’ he adds, ‘moral and conceptual tension should come to the fore once again… The reform of old parties or the creation of new ones does not simply occur with new electoral laws, though these are necessary, or with other actions that do not conquer methods dictated by one governing idea or are instrumental to what is now old, decrepit and damaging, particularly for the younger generation and the future of the country.’
He ends by saying: ‘What we need first and foremost is a programme that is as widely approved of as possible, we need the awareness and mobilisation of social groups and cultural and religious institutions. Everything that at the moment seems low key must become pre-eminent, together with a significant process of political education, as a service for the common good.’