ECONOMY MUST BE SOCIAL, AT SERVICE OF SOCIETY, POPE FRANCIS SAYS

Tue 28 February 2023:

Pope Francis said the world needs to have the courage to imagine an economy that isn’t “purely liberal” but is instead “at the service of society.”

In an interview published on Tuesday by the Catholic Belgian weekly Tertio, together with the Belgian French publication Dimanche, Francis proposed an alternative model of the economy.

“We need to be prudent with the economy: if it is too focused on finance alone, on simple numbers that have no true entities behind them, then the economy is reduced to dust and can lead to a serious betrayal,” the pontiff said.

“The economy has to be a social economy,” the pope added, citing the late John Paul II, the popular pontiff from 1978 to 2005 who added “social” to the expression “market economy.”

Francis urged people to always bear in mind social issues amid deep economic crises.

“At this time, the economic crisis is undoubtedly serious, the crisis is terrible,” he said. “The majority of people in the world-the majority-does not have enough to eat, it does not have enough to live on.”

The pope also stressed that global wealth remains in the hands of a few people who lead large businesses “which are sometimes inclined to exploitation.”

“The economy has to always be social, at the service of society,” he concluded.

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