Church in the World

Pope says financial crisis is delaying encyclical

Pope Benedict XVI has admitted that the delay in the publication of his long-awaited social encyclical is due to the difficulty in finding a credible response to the global financial crisis.

In his annual question-and-answer session with the clergy of Rome, held on 26 February at the Vatican, the Pope also admitted that he was not writing the encyclical alone. "As you know, for a long time we have been preparing an encyclical," the Pope told the priests. The Pope normally refers to himself in the first person. The document was originally planned for 2007 or early 2008 to mark the fortieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI's landmark social encyclical, Populorum Progressio. But various factors, including the current economic crisis, have continued to push back the new encyclical's release. "And during this long journey I have seen how difficult it is to speak with competence, because if a certain economic reality is not confronted with competence it cannot be credible," the Pope said.

Nonetheless, Benedict XVI indicated the encyclical would denounce the "sin of human greed", which he said was the fundamental mistake that caused the collapse of large American banks and triggered the global crisis. "Thus there needs to be ... a reasonable and reasoned denunciation of the mistakes, not with great moralising, but with concrete reasons that are made understandable to the economy of the world of today," he said. And he added that "great moralising does not help if it is not substantiated with knowledge of the reality" or if does not stimulate "what can be done concretely to change the situation step by step".

He pointed out that the financial situation had to be dealt with on two levels, one macro-economic and the other micro-economic. But he said it was not possible to fully perfect either of them because of the existence of original sin. "Maybe it is pessimism, but to me it seems like realism: as long as there is original sin we will never arrive at a radical and total correction [of the economic system]," said the Pope. "Nonetheless, we must do everything to make at least provisional corrections, sufficient ... to hamper the domination of selfishness, which presents itself under the guise of science or national and international economics," he said.

Pope Benedict said economic models alone could not overcome the injustice that the present crisis has revealed. "Justice comes about only if there are just persons," he said. "And good structures are not practicable if they are opposed by the selfishness of even competent people," he pointed out. "The universal Church must denounce, but must also announce what can be done and what must be done," said the Pope. "If, on the one hand, we do not proclaim macro-justice, the micro will not grow. But, on the other hand, if we don't do the very humble work of micro-justice, then not even the macro will grow," he said.