Church in the World

Pope urges G8 to keep its promises

POPE BENEDICT XVI this week called on G8 leaders meeting in Germany to "work seriously" to keep their promises of giving substantial aid to developing nations, especially by ensuring primary education for all by the year 2015. "I want to now issue a new appeal to the leaders gathered in Heilegendamm so that they do not shrink from their commitment to substantially increase development aid for the neediest populations, above all on the African continent," the Pope said at the end of his Wednesday general audience.

He said universal primary education was "an integral part of reaching" all the other Millennium Development Goals the leaders signed up to and re-endorsed two years ago, and the key to realising "autonomous and sustainable development". The Pope made his appeal in St Peter's Square where a day earlier Caritas Internationalis unveiled a banner saying "Make Aid Work", symbolising the confederation's own ongoing appeal to G8 leaders.

Earlier, the presidents of the Catholic bishops' conferences of the G8 nations appealed to their heads of state and government to adopt concrete measures on the most pressing issues in the world today. The issues cited included global poverty, destruction of the environment, climate change, the fight against Aids, the arms trade, money laundering and corruption.

The bishops drew special attention to the human tragedy in Darfur and the international community's failure to take effective action. The bishops recalled that at the Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005, the world's richest countries promised to spend an additional US$50 billion a year on foreign aid by 2010, with half that amount going to Africa. They had, however, not kept their promise and aid levels had remained stagnant. The bishops' letter was signed by the presidents of all the bishops' conferences with the exception of Italy, and sent to the G8 leaders on 31 May.

Italy is also a member of the G8, but the president of the country's episcopal conference (CEI) - Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa - did not sign the letter. A source close to the Italian bishops said that he had the impression that Archbishop Bagnasco was not comfortable with the letter's "vague wording".

The CEI president has been mired in controversy since he took office earlier this year because of his insistence, in concert with the Pope, that Catholic politicians in Italy vote in accordance with Vatican teaching on sexual moral issues. Under his brief leadership, the CEI has successfully pushed the Italian Government to earmark more funding for pro-family initiatives. It is believed that pushing it now to make good on its multi-billion-dollar foreign assistance programmes could put funding for domestic programmes - and other church-backed initiatives - in jeopardy.

Bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean meeting in Brazil voted to send a telegram to the G8 leaders, urging them to "guide the world economy toward humane, ecological, sustainable development based on justice, solidarity and the common good of the entire human family".