Cardinal says healthy economy not top priority

07-07-2010

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has warned against elevating the economy as an absolute good, adding that an economic model that supports human development is needed.

The cardinal noted that Pope Benedict's Caritas in Veritate encyclical calls for the economy to be understood as "human activity that accords with the integral development of peoples", reports Zenit.

He warned that making the economy an absolute will end up "subverting the order between ends and means", making it into something "omnipotent", as a result "the earthly end is confused with the transcendent".

He said the Pope "stresses how the economy, which should foster the common good of the human family, should have as a point of reference a model of development corrected of its dysfunctions and of its technocratic, materialistic and consumerist distortions".

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