Cardinal Bertone Calls for Jobs, Not Welfare States

21-03-2010

ROME, MARCH 19, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Jobs need to be created and protected, and financial support for employers is part of the recipe, says Benedict XVI's secretary of state.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone reflected on job creation in a talk Tuesday with members of Confindustria, the Italian employers' federation.

The cardinal noted that job security is so important because work is more than just the means to earn a salary.

"The problem of employment and its protection certainly arouses much anxiety," he observed. And that's because the "loss of work for so many workers and the lack of employment prospects for so many thousands of young people, though qualified, goes beyond the loss of a salary."

"Persons thrown out of work or without work prospects enter an existential crisis, because work is a constitutive part of a person, who, without it, feels out of place and useless," the cardinal said. "Not infrequently he enters into difficulty in family relationships, with well-known social consequences."

The cardinal cited Benedict XVI's "Caritas in Veritate" in calling for system reform that favors employment.

Cardinal Bertone also touched on the issue of immigration, recommending better education for would-be immigrants, starting in their home countries, or in the nations through which they pass.

He also reiterated that the recession is the result of a "deficit of moral values." Thus solutions cannot be egotistical or discourage human life, the cardinal declared.

"To do business is a potentially very high mission, but it is an element for the well-being of man, who is not only matter, and because of this calls for great attention to his spiritual needs," he said. "To ensure the development of a business, one must believe in life and sustain it with all means, helping families to form themselves, supporting birth and the care of children, thus ensuring a true and sustainable development for the industrial system."

Furthermore, Cardinal Bertone added, "to foster the creation of business' wealth, economic development should be distributed and extended to everyone. Only thus will it be able to be maintained."

"The economy and technology cannot have moral autonomy and, being means," he concluded, "they must be used for the common good and the good of the person."

http://www.zenit.org/article-28694?l=english