A ‘deficit of ethics’

One of the main causes for the global financial crisis, Pope Benedict told G20 leaders.

The pope sent a letter to Britain’s Gordon Brown at the start of the summit last week, and it got little attention in the pop media circus around the events and especially, the Obamas.

But Benedict’s letter made incisive points. He told the leaders he appreciated…

the meeting’s noble objectives based on the conviction, shared by all the participating Governments and international organizations, that the way out of the current global crisis can only be reached together, avoiding solutions marked by any nationalistic selfishness or protectionism.

Having just recently returned from an apostolic visit to Africa, Benedict wants to remind these leaders that their decisions affect more nations than are at the table.

The London Summit, just like the one in Washington in 2008, for practical and pressing reasons is limited to the convocation of those States who represent 90% of the world’s gross production and 80% of world trade. In this framework, sub-Saharan Africa is represented by just one State and some regional organizations. This situation must prompt a profound reflection among the Summit participants, since those whose voice has least force in the political scene are precisely the ones who suffer most from the harmful effects of a crisis for which they do not bear responsibility.

They’re also the ones who have “the most potential to contribute to the progress of everyone,” he added.

Then he asked them to reflect on this:

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. Nevertheless, finance, commerce and production systems are contingent human creations which, if they become objects of blind faith, bear within themselves the roots of their own downfall. The only true and solid foundation is faith in the human person.

Restore ethics to the financial world, he asked.

If a key element of the crisis is a deficit of ethics in economic structures, the same crisis teaches us that ethics is not “external” to the economy but “internal” and that the economy cannot function if it does not bear within it an ethical component…

Positive faith in the human person, and above all faith in the poorest men and women – of Africa and other regions of the world affected by extreme poverty – is what is needed if we are truly to come through the crisis once and for all…

When Benedict delivers messages like these, and the one on the floor of the UN General Assembly last spring, I wonder….anyone with a place at the table paying attention?