Aide: Care for the Poor Can Solve Financial Crisis

Urges Liberation of World's True Wealth

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 5, 2009 ( Zenit.org ).- At the conclusion of the Group of 20 summit in London, the Vatican's spokesman called for greater confidence in the poor as a way out of the international economic crisis.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said this in his weekly editorial on the most recent episode of "Octava Dies."

The priest recalled the exhortation that Benedict XVI addressed to the G-20, which met in London last Thursday and Friday, urging them to coordinate with urgency all the means necessary to overcome the present crisis, so that it will never be repeated, and to pay special attention to the poorest and those who do not have a voice.

Citing the letter the Pope sent last Monday to the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, Father Lombardi explained, "Effective confidence in man, above all confidence in the poorest men and women, will be the proof that we truly want to get out of the crisis without exclusions and that we want to decisively avoid repeating situations similar to those we are experiencing today."

The priest then recalled that after returning from his trip to Africa, Benedict XVI brought with him "the dramatic problems and the poverty of that continent, but also the will to live and the hope for the redemption of its inhabitants" and that, on account of this, he "admonishes the wealthy who must not and cannot build the future without taking the poor into consideration."

Solid foundation

"But the crucial point," the spokesman observed, "is identifying the foundation and starting to build a just, stable world order" with solidarity. According to the Pope, he added, "the only true and solid foundation is confidence in man."

He emphasized a foundation that is "no longer a blind confidence in finance, and business or in systems of production, without solid ethical reference, but an economy that really carries 'inside' of it the awareness of the dignity of all human persons and its responsibility to serve their integral development."

"We all want to get out of this present crisis," Father Lombardi continued, "but it would be illusory to think that we could get out of it leaving to the margins those who suffer from it the most and who, today, have a weaker voice, but who can offer so much for the future of the human family."

He concluded: "Struggling to eliminate extreme poverty and so liberate the true wealth of the world: God's creatures, made in his image: This is the priority most worthy of being pursued by those who have our world's fate in their hands today."