VATICAN CITY (CNS): Pope Benedict XVI said labour unions have an important role to play in finding a way out of the global financial crisis and establishing a new culture of solidarity and responsibility in the marketplace.
“The great challenge and the great opportunity posed by today’s worrisome economic crisis is to find a new synthesis between the common good and the market, between capital and labour.
“And in this regard, union organisations can make a significant contribution,” the Pope told directors of the Confederation of Italian Labor Unions on January 31.
The Pope emphasised that the inalienable dignity of the worker had been a cornerstone of the Church’s social teaching in the modern age, and said this teaching had helped the movement toward fair wages, improvement of working conditions and protection of vulnerable categories of employees.
“In order to overcome the economic and social crisis we’re experiencing, we know that a free and responsible effort on the part of everyone is required,” the Pope said.
He noted that his predecessor Pope John Paul II had underlined labour as the key component in social questions and had described the labour union as an indispensable element of social life in modern industrialised societies.
Pope Benedict has been working on his first social encyclical, tentatively titled “Caritas in Veritate” (“Love in Truth”), which is expected to be published sometime this year.
