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Pope Francis attacks 'cult of money' in reform call
Pontiff says
politicians need to be bold in tackling the root causes of the economic crisis
Pope Francis
said the root causes of the economic crisis lay in acceptance of money's power
over society.
Pope
Francis has hit out at unbridled capitalism and the "cult of
money", calling for ethical reform of the financial system to create a
more humane society.
In an
impassioned appeal, the Argentinian pontiff said politicians needed to be bold
in tackling the root causes of the economic crisis, which he said lay in an
acceptance of money's "power over ourselves and our society".
"We have
created new idols," he said in a speech in the Vatican. "The worship
of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of
money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any
truly humane goal."
Attacking
unchecked capitalism, the pope said the growing inequality in society was
caused by "ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and
financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are
themselves charged with providing for the common good".
Francis, who as
a priest in Buenos Aires experienced his country's financial crisis, has made
the rejection of riches and luxury the hallmark of his two-month pontificate.
Days after his election as the Roman Catholic church's first non-European pope,
he spoke of his desire for a "poor church".
On Thursday, he
said: "A new, invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one
which unilaterally and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules."
Ethics, he
said, were too often dismissed as a nuisance. "There is a need for
financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic
reform to benefit everyone," he said. "Money has to serve, not to
rule."
The Vatican's
own source of economic strife, the once scandal-ridden Institute for Works of Religion
(IOR) commonly known as the Vatican Bank, is itself reportedly preparing to
implement certain reforms to put its troubles behind it.
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