At 11:15 this morning, in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, His Holiness, Pope Francis received in audience the members of the Italian Cooperative Confederation.
Brothers and sisters, good morning!
This last (choir) was the most cooperative, the most melodious one! Congratulations!
Thank you for this opportunity to meet with you and with all that you represent, the fruit of cooperation. Cooperatives defy everything, even the math, because in a cooperative, one plus one equals three! In a cooperative, a failure is only a partial failure. This is the beauty of cooperatives!
Above all else, you hare the living memory of a great treasure of the Italian Church. In fact, we know that at the beginning of the Italian Cooperative Movement, many agricultural and credit cooperatives, as far back as the 9th century, were wisely founded and promoted by priests and parishes. Still today, in various Italian dioceses, cooperatives function as effective solutions to the problems of unemployment and various forms of social challenge.
Today, it is a rule, I wouldn't say normal, habitual ... but many times we see: Are you looking for work? Come, come to this company. Eleven hours, ten hours of work, 600 Euro. Would you like that? No? Go home then? What to do in a world that works like that? Because there is a code, a line of people who are looking for work: if you're not happy, another person will be. And hunger, hunger makes us accept that which is given, illegal work ... I can believe, for example, regarding domestic helpers: how many men and women who work as domestics look to social assistance to provide their own lodgings?
All this is well known. The Church has always known, appreciated and encouraged the cooperative experience. We read about it in the documents of the Magisterium. We recall the cry that was launched in 1891, with Rerum Novarum, by Pope Leo XIII: All owners and not all proletarians. And there are certainly also the pages of the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, where Benedict XVI expresses his accord with cooperatives for credit and for consumer goods (CV, 65-67), pointing especially to the importance of the economy of communion and the non-profit sector (CV, 41), to affirm the fact that the profit-god is not in fact a divine person, but only a compass and a measure of entrepreneurial activity. Pope Benedict also explained how our world needs an economy of giving (CV, 34-39), that is to say an economy capable of giving life to businesses, inspiring them to the principle of solidarity and a capacity for creating society. Through you, the exclamation pronounced by Leo XIII resounds, blessing the innovations put forward by the Italian Catholic Cooperative Movement when he says that, in order to do this, Christianity has the wealth of a marvelous strength (RN, 15).
These, and many other statements of recognition and encouragement offered to cooperatives by the Church are still valid today. I think also of the extraordinary social teachings of Blessed Paul VI. These claims we can affirm and strengthen. It is not necessary to repeat or to cite them in full.
Today, I would like our dialogue to look not only at the past but above all to have it address what is ahead: the new prospects, the new responsibilities, the new forms of initiative of the cooperative businesses. It is a true mission that asks us for creative imagination to find ways, methods, attitudes and instruments to combat the throwaway culture, which we live today, the throwaway culture cultivated by powers that govern the economic-financial policies of the globalized world, where the god of money is at the centre.
Globalize solidarity – this must be globalized: solidarity! – today it means to think of the vertiginous increase of unemployed, the incessant tears of the poor, the need to take up a development that is the true integral progress of the person, who is certainly in need of income, but not only of income! We can think of the needs of health, which the traditional welfare systems can no longer satisfy; of the pressing needs of solidarity, putting again at the centre of the world economy the dignity of the human person, as you said. As Pope Leo XIII would say again today: Christianity has a wonderful wealth of strengths to globalize solidarity!
Therefore, do not pause to look only at what you have been able to do. Continue to perfect, to reinforce and to update the good and solid realities that you have already built. However, you must also have the courage to come out of them, the loads of experience and good methods, to lead cooperation to new frontiers of change, to the existential fringes where hope is in need of emerging and where, unfortunately, the present socio-political system seems, instead, fatally destined to suffocate hope, to rob people of hope and to leave increasing risks and menaces in its wake.
This great leap forward that we propose cooperatives should take, will confirm that all that you have already done is not only positive and vital but also continues to be prophetic. Therefore, you must continue to invent – this is the word: to invent – new forms of cooperation, because the warning: when the tree puts out new branches, the roots are alive and the trunk is strong! -- is also valid for cooperatives.
Here, today, you represent valid experiences in many sectors: from the development of agriculture to the promotion of the building of new houses for those who do not have a house, from the social cooperatives to cooperative credit, largely represented here, from fishing to industry, to enterprises, to communities, to consumption, to distribution and to many other types of service. I am well aware that this list is not complete, but it is sufficiently useful for understanding how precious the cooperative method is, which must go on and continue to be creative. It has revealed itself as such in many challenges. And it will do so again! However, every appreciation and every encouragement risks remaining generic. Instead, I would like to offer you some concrete encouragement.
The first is this: the cooperatives must continue to be the engine that relieves and develops the weakest part of our local communities and of civil society. Sentiment is not capable of this. Therefore the foundation of new cooperative enterprises must take first place, along with further development of the existing ones, in order to create above all new possibilities of work that do not exist today.
My thoughts go first of all to young people, because we know that youth unemployment, which is dramatically high – we can think of some countries in Europe where it is 40, 50% -- destroys hope in them. However, we can think also of the many women who have the need and will to insert themselves in the world of work. We do not neglect the adults who often remain prematurely without work. What are you? I’m an engineer – Ah, how nice, how nice. How old are you? – 49 – No good, go. This happens every day. In addition to new enterprises, we also look at the companies that are in difficulty, to those that it suits old bosses to allow to die and which instead can be revived with initiatives that you call workers buy out, recovered enterprises, in my language, saved companies. And I, as I said to their representatives, am a fan of recovered enterprises!
A second encouragement – not in any order of importance – is that of activating yourselves as protagonists to bring about new Welfare solutions, in particular in the field of health, a delicate field in which so many poor people no longer find adequate answers to their needs. I know what you have been doing for years with heart and passion, in the fringes of the cities and of our society, for families, children, the elderly, the sick and disadvantaged persons in difficulty for different reasons, bringing to homes both heart and help. Charity is a gift! It is not a simple gesture to calm the heart; it is a gift! When I do charitable things, I give myself! If I am unable to give myself, then it is not charity -- a gift without which one cannot enter the home of one who suffers. In the language of the Social Doctrine of the Church this means to appeal to subsidiarity with force and coherence: it means to join forces!
How good it would be if, beginning from Rome, there could be born through cooperatives in parishes and in hospitals – I am thinking of the Bambin Gesu in particular, an efficient network of assistance and solidarity. And people, beginning with the neediest, would be put at the centre of all this solidarity movement: people at the centre, the neediest at the centre. This is the mission we propose to you! The task for you is to invent practical solutions, to make this network function in concrete situations in your local communities, beginning in fact from your history, with your patrimony of knowledge to combine being an enterprise and at the same time not forgetting that the person is at the centre of everything.
You have done so much, and yet there is still so much to be done! Let’s keep going!
The third encouragement regards the economy, its relationship with social justice, with the dignity and value of persons. Noted is that a certain liberalism believes it is necessary to produce wealth first, and it does not matter how, in order to then promote some redistributive policy by the State. First fill the glass and then give to others. Others think that it is the enterprise itself that must enlarge the crumbs of accumulated wealth, thus absolving the so-called social responsibility. The risk is run of deluding oneself of doing good while, unfortunately, one continues to do only marketing without coming out of the fatal cycle of egoism of persons and companies that have the god of money at the centre.
Instead, we know that by realizing a new quality of economy, the capacity is created to make persons grow in all their potentiality. For instance: the members of the cooperative must not be only furnishers, workers, well treated users, they must always be protagonists, they must grow through the cooperative, they must grow as persons, socially and professionally, in responsibility, in concretizing hope, in doing things together. I am not saying that there must not be growth in income, but this is not enough: the enterprise managed by the cooperative must truly grow in a cooperative way, namely, involving everyone. One plus one equals three! This is the logic.
In the Latin etymology co-operators means to work together, to cooperate and, therefore, to work, help, contribute to reach an end. Do not ever be content with the word cooperative without having the awareness of the true essence and the spirit of cooperation.
The fourth suggestion is this: if we look around us, it never happens that the economy is renewed in a society growing old, instead of growing. The co-operative movement can exercise an important role by supporting, facilitating and also encouraging the life of families. To bring about conciliation, or perhaps better the harmonization between work and family; it is a task you have already started and that you must increasingly carry out. To do this means also to help women to fulfil themselves in their vocation and to bring their talents to fruition. Women should be free to increasingly be protagonists, whether in enterprises or in families! I am well aware that the cooperatives already propose many services and many organizational formulas, such as those which meet the needs of all, of children and of the elderly in particular, from nursery schools to home help. This is our way of managing common goods; those goods that must not be the property of a few and must not pursue speculative ends.
The fifth encouragement, perhaps, will surprise you! Money is necessary to do these things! In general, cooperatives are not founded by great capitalists; rather, it is often said that they are structurally under-capitalized. Instead, Pope Paul VI said: you must invest, and you must invest well! Certainly, in Italy, but not only in Italy, it is difficult to obtain public money to fill the scarcity of resources. The solution I propose to you is this: bring together with determination the good means to carry out good works. Collaborate more between banks and business cooperatives, organize the resources to make it possible for families to live with dignity and serenity; pay just salaries to workers, investing especially in initiatives that are truly necessary.
It is not easy to speak of money. Basil of Cesarea , a 4th-century Father of the Church, said, (and this was adopted by Francis of Assisi), that money is the dung of the devil. The Pope repeats it also now: money is the dung of the devil! When money becomes an idol, it controls man’s choices. And then it ruins man and condemns him. It renders him a slave. Money at the service of life can be managed in the right way by a cooperative, if it is, however, a genuine, true cooperative where capital does not command man but man commands capital.
Therefore I say to you that you do well – and I say also that you do so ever more – to oppose and combat false cooperatives, those that prostitute the very name cooperative, namely, of a very good reality to deceive people with objectives of profit contrary to true and genuine cooperation. Do well, I say to you, because, in the field in which you operate, to assume an honorable facade and instead pursue dishonorable and immoral ends, often addressed to the exploitation of work, or to the manipulations of the market, and even to scandalous traffic of corruption is a disgrace and a very grave lie which cannot absolutely be accepted. Fight against this! But how should you fight? Only with words? With ideas? Fight with just cooperation, the true one, the one that always wins.
A cooperative economy, if it is genuine, if it is going to carry out a strong social function, if it is going to be a protagonist of the future of a nation and of each local community, the cooperative economy, must pursue transparent and limpid ends. It must promote the economy of honesty! It must be a healing economy in the insidious sea of the global economy: a true economy promoted by persons who have at heart and in mind only the common good.
Cooperatives have a strong international tradition. In this also you have been real pioneers! Your international associations were born well before those that other enterprises created in much later times. Now there is the new great globalization, which reduces some imbalances but creates many others. Therefore, the cooperative movement cannot remain foreign to the economic and social globalization, whose effects are known in all countries, and even within our homes.
However, do cooperatives participate in globalization as other enterprises? Is there an original way that allows cooperatives to address the new challenges of the global market? How can cooperatives participate in the development of cooperation, safeguarding the principles of solidarity and justice? I say it to you to say it to all the cooperatives worldwide: the cooperatives cannot remain shut-in at home, nor even less so can they come out of their homes as if they are not co-operatives. No, one cannot think of a two-faced cooperative. There must be the courage and the imagination to find the right way to integrate development, justice and peace in the world.
Finally, do not let the collaboration of the cooperative movement with your parishes and your dioceses live only in your memory. The ways of collaboration must be diverse, in relation to those of its origins, but the way must always be the same! Where there are old and new existential fringes, where there are disadvantaged persons, where there are persons alone and discarded, where there are persons who are not respected, stretch out your hand to them! Collaborate among yourselves, in respect to the vocational identity of each one, stretching out your hand!
I know that you have been collaborating for some years with other cooperative associations – even if not connected with our history and our traditions – to create an alliance of Italian co-operatives and co-operators. For the time being it is an alliance in the making, but be confident in reaching a unique association, an ever more vast alliance between co-operators and cooperatives. The Italian co-operative movement has a great tradition, respected in the international co-operative world. The cooperative mission in Italy was very linked from the beginning to the identity, values and social forces present in the country. Please, respect this identity! However, the choices that distinguished and divided were often in the long run stronger than the choices that, instead, joined forces and united the efforts of all. Now you think you can rank in first place that which unites you. It is in fact around that which unites you, the most authentic, the most profound and the most vital part of Italian cooperatives, that you wish to build your new associative form.
You will do well to plan this way, and thus you will take a step forward! Of course, there are Catholic cooperatives and non-Catholic cooperatives. However, is faith saved by remaining shut-in on ourselves? Remaining alone among ourselves? Live your alliance as Christians, as an answer to your faith and your identity without fear! Faith and identity are the basis. Go forward, therefore, and walk together with all persons of good will! And this is also a Christian call, a Christian call to all. Christian values are not for us alone; they are to be shared! And share them with others, with those who do not think like us but want the same things that we want. Go forward, have courage! Be creators, poets, go forward!
Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for the meeting with the Italian Cooperative Confederation
Brothers and sisters, good morning!
This last (choir) was the most cooperative, the most melodious one! Congratulations!
Thank you for this opportunity to meet with you and with all that you represent, the fruit of cooperation. Cooperatives defy everything, even the math, because in a cooperative, one plus one equals three! In a cooperative, a failure is only a partial failure. This is the beauty of cooperatives!
Above all else, you hare the living memory of a great treasure of the Italian Church. In fact, we know that at the beginning of the Italian Cooperative Movement, many agricultural and credit cooperatives, as far back as the 9th century, were wisely founded and promoted by priests and parishes. Still today, in various Italian dioceses, cooperatives function as effective solutions to the problems of unemployment and various forms of social challenge.
Today, it is a rule, I wouldn't say normal, habitual ... but many times we see: Are you looking for work? Come, come to this company. Eleven hours, ten hours of work, 600 Euro. Would you like that? No? Go home then? What to do in a world that works like that? Because there is a code, a line of people who are looking for work: if you're not happy, another person will be. And hunger, hunger makes us accept that which is given, illegal work ... I can believe, for example, regarding domestic helpers: how many men and women who work as domestics look to social assistance to provide their own lodgings?
All this is well known. The Church has always known, appreciated and encouraged the cooperative experience. We read about it in the documents of the Magisterium. We recall the cry that was launched in 1891, with Rerum Novarum, by Pope Leo XIII: All owners and not all proletarians. And there are certainly also the pages of the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, where Benedict XVI expresses his accord with cooperatives for credit and for consumer goods (CV, 65-67), pointing especially to the importance of the economy of communion and the non-profit sector (CV, 41), to affirm the fact that the profit-god is not in fact a divine person, but only a compass and a measure of entrepreneurial activity. Pope Benedict also explained how our world needs an economy of giving (CV, 34-39), that is to say an economy capable of giving life to businesses, inspiring them to the principle of solidarity and a capacity for creating society. Through you, the exclamation pronounced by Leo XIII resounds, blessing the innovations put forward by the Italian Catholic Cooperative Movement when he says that, in order to do this, Christianity has the wealth of a marvelous strength (RN, 15).
These, and many other statements of recognition and encouragement offered to cooperatives by the Church are still valid today. I think also of the extraordinary social teachings of Blessed Paul VI. These claims we can affirm and strengthen. It is not necessary to repeat or to cite them in full.
Today, I would like our dialogue to look not only at the past but above all to have it address what is ahead: the new prospects, the new responsibilities, the new forms of initiative of the cooperative businesses. It is a true mission that asks us for creative imagination to find ways, methods, attitudes and instruments to combat the throwaway culture, which we live today, the throwaway culture cultivated by powers that govern the economic-financial policies of the globalized world, where the god of money is at the centre.
Globalize solidarity – this must be globalized: solidarity! – today it means to think of the vertiginous increase of unemployed, the incessant tears of the poor, the need to take up a development that is the true integral progress of the person, who is certainly in need of income, but not only of income! We can think of the needs of health, which the traditional welfare systems can no longer satisfy; of the pressing needs of solidarity, putting again at the centre of the world economy the dignity of the human person, as you said. As Pope Leo XIII would say again today: Christianity has a wonderful wealth of strengths to globalize solidarity!
Therefore, do not pause to look only at what you have been able to do. Continue to perfect, to reinforce and to update the good and solid realities that you have already built. However, you must also have the courage to come out of them, the loads of experience and good methods, to lead cooperation to new frontiers of change, to the existential fringes where hope is in need of emerging and where, unfortunately, the present socio-political system seems, instead, fatally destined to suffocate hope, to rob people of hope and to leave increasing risks and menaces in its wake.
This great leap forward that we propose cooperatives should take, will confirm that all that you have already done is not only positive and vital but also continues to be prophetic. Therefore, you must continue to invent – this is the word: to invent – new forms of cooperation, because the warning: when the tree puts out new branches, the roots are alive and the trunk is strong! -- is also valid for cooperatives.
Here, today, you represent valid experiences in many sectors: from the development of agriculture to the promotion of the building of new houses for those who do not have a house, from the social cooperatives to cooperative credit, largely represented here, from fishing to industry, to enterprises, to communities, to consumption, to distribution and to many other types of service. I am well aware that this list is not complete, but it is sufficiently useful for understanding how precious the cooperative method is, which must go on and continue to be creative. It has revealed itself as such in many challenges. And it will do so again! However, every appreciation and every encouragement risks remaining generic. Instead, I would like to offer you some concrete encouragement.
The first is this: the cooperatives must continue to be the engine that relieves and develops the weakest part of our local communities and of civil society. Sentiment is not capable of this. Therefore the foundation of new cooperative enterprises must take first place, along with further development of the existing ones, in order to create above all new possibilities of work that do not exist today.
My thoughts go first of all to young people, because we know that youth unemployment, which is dramatically high – we can think of some countries in Europe where it is 40, 50% -- destroys hope in them. However, we can think also of the many women who have the need and will to insert themselves in the world of work. We do not neglect the adults who often remain prematurely without work. What are you? I’m an engineer – Ah, how nice, how nice. How old are you? – 49 – No good, go. This happens every day. In addition to new enterprises, we also look at the companies that are in difficulty, to those that it suits old bosses to allow to die and which instead can be revived with initiatives that you call workers buy out, recovered enterprises, in my language, saved companies. And I, as I said to their representatives, am a fan of recovered enterprises!
A second encouragement – not in any order of importance – is that of activating yourselves as protagonists to bring about new Welfare solutions, in particular in the field of health, a delicate field in which so many poor people no longer find adequate answers to their needs. I know what you have been doing for years with heart and passion, in the fringes of the cities and of our society, for families, children, the elderly, the sick and disadvantaged persons in difficulty for different reasons, bringing to homes both heart and help. Charity is a gift! It is not a simple gesture to calm the heart; it is a gift! When I do charitable things, I give myself! If I am unable to give myself, then it is not charity -- a gift without which one cannot enter the home of one who suffers. In the language of the Social Doctrine of the Church this means to appeal to subsidiarity with force and coherence: it means to join forces!
How good it would be if, beginning from Rome, there could be born through cooperatives in parishes and in hospitals – I am thinking of the Bambin Gesu in particular, an efficient network of assistance and solidarity. And people, beginning with the neediest, would be put at the centre of all this solidarity movement: people at the centre, the neediest at the centre. This is the mission we propose to you! The task for you is to invent practical solutions, to make this network function in concrete situations in your local communities, beginning in fact from your history, with your patrimony of knowledge to combine being an enterprise and at the same time not forgetting that the person is at the centre of everything.
You have done so much, and yet there is still so much to be done! Let’s keep going!
The third encouragement regards the economy, its relationship with social justice, with the dignity and value of persons. Noted is that a certain liberalism believes it is necessary to produce wealth first, and it does not matter how, in order to then promote some redistributive policy by the State. First fill the glass and then give to others. Others think that it is the enterprise itself that must enlarge the crumbs of accumulated wealth, thus absolving the so-called social responsibility. The risk is run of deluding oneself of doing good while, unfortunately, one continues to do only marketing without coming out of the fatal cycle of egoism of persons and companies that have the god of money at the centre.
Instead, we know that by realizing a new quality of economy, the capacity is created to make persons grow in all their potentiality. For instance: the members of the cooperative must not be only furnishers, workers, well treated users, they must always be protagonists, they must grow through the cooperative, they must grow as persons, socially and professionally, in responsibility, in concretizing hope, in doing things together. I am not saying that there must not be growth in income, but this is not enough: the enterprise managed by the cooperative must truly grow in a cooperative way, namely, involving everyone. One plus one equals three! This is the logic.
In the Latin etymology co-operators means to work together, to cooperate and, therefore, to work, help, contribute to reach an end. Do not ever be content with the word cooperative without having the awareness of the true essence and the spirit of cooperation.
The fourth suggestion is this: if we look around us, it never happens that the economy is renewed in a society growing old, instead of growing. The co-operative movement can exercise an important role by supporting, facilitating and also encouraging the life of families. To bring about conciliation, or perhaps better the harmonization between work and family; it is a task you have already started and that you must increasingly carry out. To do this means also to help women to fulfil themselves in their vocation and to bring their talents to fruition. Women should be free to increasingly be protagonists, whether in enterprises or in families! I am well aware that the cooperatives already propose many services and many organizational formulas, such as those
The fifth encouragement, perhaps, will surprise you! Money is necessary to do these things! In general, cooperatives are not founded by great capitalists; rather, it is often said that they are structurally under-capitalized. Instead, Pope Paul VI said: you must invest, and you must invest well! Certainly, in Italy, but not only in Italy, it is difficult to obtain public money to fill the scarcity of resources. The solution I propose to you is this: bring together with determination the good means to carry out good works. Collaborate more between banks and business cooperatives, organize the resources to make it possible for families to live with dignity and serenity; pay just salaries to workers, investing especially in initiatives that are truly necessary.
It is not easy to speak of money. Basil of Cesarea , a 4th-century Father of the Church, said, (and this was adopted by Francis of Assisi), that money is the dung of the devil. The Pope repeats it also now: money is the dung of the devil! When money becomes an idol, it controls man’s choices. And then it ruins man and condemns him. It renders him a slave. Money at the service of life can be managed in the right way by a cooperative, if it is, however, a genuine, true cooperative where capital does not command man but man commands capital.
Therefore I say to you that you do well – and I say also that you do so ever more – to oppose and combat false cooperatives, those that prostitute the very name cooperative, namely, of a very good reality to deceive people with objectives of profit contrary to true and genuine cooperation. Do well, I say to you, because, in the field in which you operate, to assume an honorable facade and instead pursue dishonorable and immoral ends, often addressed to the exploitation of work, or to the manipulations of the market, and even to scandalous traffic of corruption is a disgrace and a very grave lie which cannot absolutely be accepted. Fight against this! But how should you fight? Only with words? With ideas? Fight with just cooperation, the true one, the one that always wins.
A cooperative economy, if it is genuine, if it is going to carry out a strong social function, if it is going to be a protagonist of the future of a nation and of each local community, the cooperative economy, must pursue transparent and limpid ends. It must promote the economy of honesty! It must be a healing economy in the insidious sea of the global economy: a true economy promoted by persons who have at heart and in mind only the common good.
Cooperatives have a strong international tradition. In this also you have been real pioneers! Your international associations were born well before those that other enterprises created in much later times. Now there is the new great globalization, which reduces some imbalances but creates many others. Therefore, the cooperative movement cannot remain foreign to the economic and social globalization, whose effects are known in all countries, and even within our homes.
However, do cooperatives participate in globalization as other enterprises? Is there an original way that allows cooperatives to address the new challenges of the global market? How can cooperatives participate in the development of cooperation, safeguarding the principles of solidarity and justice? I say it to you to say it to all the cooperatives worldwide: the cooperatives cannot remain shut-in at home, nor even less so can they come out of their homes as if they are not co-operatives. No, one cannot think of a two-faced cooperative. There must be the courage and the imagination to find the right way to integrate development, justice and peace in the world.
Finally, do not let the collaboration of the cooperative movement with your parishes and your dioceses live only in your memory. The ways of collaboration must be diverse, in relation to those of its origins, but the way must always be the same! Where there are old and new existential fringes, where there are disadvantaged persons, where there are persons alone and discarded, where there are persons who are not respected, stretch out your hand to them! Collaborate among yourselves, in respect to the vocational identity of each one, stretching out your hand!
I know that you have been collaborating for some years with other cooperative associations – even if not connected with our history and our traditions – to create an alliance of Italian co-operatives and co-operators. For the time being it is an alliance in the making, but be confident in reaching a unique association, an ever more vast alliance between co-operators and cooperatives. The Italian co-operative movement has a great tradition, respected in the international co-operative world. The cooperative mission in Italy was very linked from the beginning to the identity, values and social forces present in the country. Please, respect this identity! However, the choices that distinguished and divided were often in the long run stronger than the choices that, instead, joined forces and united the efforts of all. Now you think you can rank in first place that which unites you. It is in fact around that which unites you, the most authentic, the most profound and the most vital part of Italian cooperatives, that you wish to build your new associative form.
You will do well to plan this way, and thus you will take a step forward! Of course, there are Catholic cooperatives and non-Catholic cooperatives. However, is faith saved by remaining shut-in on ourselves? Remaining alone among ourselves? Live your alliance as Christians, as an answer to your faith and your identity without fear! Faith and identity are the basis. Go forward, therefore, and walk together with all persons of good will! And this is also a Christian call, a Christian call to all. Christian values are not for us alone; they are to be shared! And share them with others, with those who do not think like us but want the same things that we want. Go forward, have courage! Be creators, poets, go forward!
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