VATICAN SECRETARY of State Tarcisio Bertone said free-market economics legitimised greed. “Greed market has substituted free market,” Cardinal Bertone said yesterday in a speech to Italian senators in Rome.
In his speech, the cardinal cited Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical calling for a new financial order. The 82-year-old pontiff on July 7th published the 150-page Caritas in Veritate(Charity in Truth). The pope's reflections on capitalism were two years in the making and publication was held up by the credit crunch. "Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty," the pontiff wrote in the encyclical.
Cardinal Bertone, the second-highest official in the Vatican, underscored the pope’s message to Italy’s legislators. Since the 1970s, he said, developed nations had “exposed their real economies to the whims of finance” and convinced consumers to spend beyond their purchasing power.
Benedict has been outspoken in denouncing globalisation. In an October 7th speech, he reflected on crashing markets and concluded that "money vanishes, it is nothing" and warned that "the only solid reality is the word of God". – ( Bloomberg)