VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI urged world leaders meeting in London this week to “restore ethics to the financial world” and assist underdeveloped economies to weather the global financial crisis.
“Financial crises are triggered when — partially due to the decline of correct ethical conduct — those working in the economic sector lose trust in its modes of operating and in its financial systems,” Benedict wrote Monday (Mar. 30) in a letter to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
“For this reason all the measures proposed to rein in this crisis must seek, … through appropriate regulations and controls, to restore ethics to the financial world.”
Brown is host of the April 2-3 G20 summit, where leaders of the world’s 19 largest national economies and the European Union are meeting to discuss a collective response to the global economic crisis.
Benedict urged the G20 to avoid “solutions marked by any nationalistic selfishness or protectionism,” or which involve savings at the expense of poorer nations.
“Development aid, including the commercial and financial conditions favorable to less developed countries and the cancellation of the external debt of the poorest and most indebted countries, has not been the cause of the crisis and, out of fundamental justice, must not be its victim,” the pope wrote.
In his reply on Tuesday (Mar. 31), Brown agreed that “it is vital that rich countries keep their promises on aid even in these tough times.”
The pope’s letter touched on themes that are likely to appear in his long-awaited encyclical on Catholic social doctrine, which the Vatican is expected to release before the summer.
