Pope urges global solidarity in annual peace message

c. 2008 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Disarmament, trade liberalization, and wider access to medicines for the treatment of AIDS are among the most effective ways of fighting global poverty, Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday (Dec. 11) in a statement released by the Vatican. “Fighting Poverty To Build Peace” is the title of this […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Disarmament, trade liberalization, and wider access to medicines for the treatment of AIDS are among the most effective ways of fighting global poverty, Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday (Dec. 11) in a statement released by the Vatican.

“Fighting Poverty To Build Peace” is the title of this year’s papal message for the annual World Day of Peace (Jan. 1). Focusing on material deprivation as both a cause and consequence of armed conflict, the statement deplores what Benedict characterizes as widening inequality in a globalized world.


“It is increasingly evident that peace can be built only if everyone is assured the possibility of reasonable growth,” the pope writes. “It is utterly foolish to build a luxury home in the midst of desert or decay.”

The pope cites military spending as a major cause of inequality, since arms purchases consume funds that could otherwise be “earmarked for development projects to assist the poorest and most needy.”

Yet Benedict rejects what he calls the “illusion that a mere redistribution of existing wealth can definitively solve the problem of poverty,” and endorses a “specific and well-integrated culture of enterprise” in order to promote the “inescapable duty” of “wealth creation.”

To relieve the plight of those economies, “mostly in Africa,” that depend on commodity exports for survival, Benedict says all countries should enjoy equal “access to the world market, without exclusion or marginalization.”

Calling AIDS “a major cause of poverty,” Benedict emphasizes prevention of the disease through promotion of a “sexual ethic that fully corresponds to the dignity of the person,” and suggests making patented medicines more available in poorer countries by loosening intellectual property laws.

Rejecting arguments that poverty is a result of overpopulation, the pope notes that the proportion of the world below the absolute-poverty line has fallen “by as much as half” since 1981, despite rising numbers of people. “Population is proving to be an asset, not a factor that contributes to poverty,” he concludes.

The pope’s message also addresses the recent financial crisis, which he blames on “very short-term thinking, which aims at increasing the value of financial operations and concentrates on the technical management of various forms of risk” rather than the long-term investment necessary for development.


While his message concentrates on those suffering from a lack of worldly goods, Benedict also mentions the spiritual neediness of “advanced wealthy societies,” which he says live in “affective, moral and spiritual poverty, seen in people whose interior lives are disoriented and who experience various forms of malaise despite their economic prosperity.”

KRE DEA END ROCCA

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