At 12:15pm today, in the Paul VI Hall, His Holiness, Pope Francis received in audience a group of business leaders who are participating in a conference known a Confindustria.
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning!
I greet you all, representatives of the business world who have come here in such great number. I thank your President, Mister Squinzi, as well as Mister Ghizzoni and Mistress Marcegaglia for the words they have offered. With this gathering, which represents a first in history for your Association, your aim is to confirm a commitment: to contributing through your work toward a more just society that is closer to the needs of humanity. Your desire is to reflect together on the ethics of doing business; together, you have decided to strengthen your focus on the values which are the backbone of your formative programmes, in order to promote the territory and the promotion of social relationships, and to allow for a concrete alternative to the consumerist model of profit at all costs.
Working together, is the expression that you have chosen as your guide and orientation. It inspires you to collaborate, share and prepare the way for relationships governed by a common sense of responsibility. This paves the way for new strategies, new styles and new attitudes. How different our lives would be if indeed we were to learn, day by day, to work, to think and to build together!
In the complex world of enterprise, working together means investing in projects that involve subjects that are often forgotten or neglected. Among these, first of all, are families, the focus of humanity, in which the experience of work, the sacrifice that feeds it and the benefits derived from it find sense and value. Together with families, we cannot forget the weakest and most marginalized categories, such as the elderly, who can still contribute resources and energies toward actively collaborating, but who are too often neglected as though they were useless or unproductive. And what of all the potential workers, especially the young who, as prisoners of precarious employment or long periods of unemployment, are not endowed with a wealth of work experience or a fair wage which would give them the dignity of which they sometimes feel deprived?
Together, all these strengths can make a difference for an enterprise that focuses on people, the quality of their relationships, the truth of their commitment to building a world of justice, a world that is truly committed to all people. In fact, working together means focusing the work not on the solitary genius of one person, but on the collaboration that exists between many people. In other words, it means building networks that value the gifts of all, without however neglecting the unique and non-repeatable nature of each individual. At the centre of every enterprise therefore, the focus should be the person: not an abstract concept, an ideal, a theory, but that which is concrete, including his dreams, his needs, his hopes and his labours.
Concrete attention to the person involves a series of important choices: it means giving each person that which is his due, tearing mothers and fathers of families away from the anxiety of not being able to provide a future, much less the necessities of the present to their children; it means knowing how to direct, but also knowing how to listen, to share projects and ideas with humility and trust; it means working in such a way that labours create other work, responsibilities create other responsiblities, hope creates more hope, above all for younger generations who need this gift more than ever before.
In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I issued a challenge to support one another, to make every experience a shared opportunity for a better chance of meeting and of being in solidarity with others (EG, 87). Faced with so many barriers of injustice, loneliness, mistrust and suspicions which still endure today, the world of work, of which you are the leading authors, is called to take courageous steps in order so that finding yourselves and to working together is not only a slogan, but a plan of action for the present and for the future.
Dear friends, you have a mobile vocation oriented toward producing wealth and toward improving the world for all people (Laudato Si', 129); you are therefore called to be builders of the common good and artisans of a new humanism of work. You are called to protect professionalism, and at the same time to pay attention to the conditions in which work is performed, lest such work should result in accidents and uncomfortable situations. Your path must always be guided by justice, which rejects the recommendations of favoritism and the dangerous deviations of dishonesty and easy compromises. The supreme law in everything you do must be attention to the dignity of the other, an absolute and indispensable value. This is the horizon of altruism that distinguishes your commitment: it will lead you to reject categorically any possibility that the dignity of the person may be trampled upon for the sake of production efficiency that masks individualistic myopia, individualism and thirst for profits. The enterprise that you represent must always be open to the broader meaning of life, which will in turn allow her to truly serve the common good, with its efforts to multiply all goods and to make them accessible to all people in the world (Evangelii Gaudium, 203). In fact, the common good is the compass that guides all productive activity so that an economy by all and for all can grow, one that is not insensitive to the eye of those who are in need (Sirach 4:1). It is indeed possible, as long as the simple proclamation of economic liberty does not prevail over the concrete freedom of mankind and his rights, as long as markets do not become absolute, but honour the demands of justice, and in the final analysis, the demands of the dignity of persons. There is no freedom without justice and justice cannot exist without respect for the dignity of each individual.
I thank you for your commitment for for all the good that you are doing and that you are able to do. May the Lord bless you, and I ask you, please - don't forget to pray for me. Thank you!
Now I would like to ask the Lord the bless you all, as well as your families and your enterprises.
Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for participants in the Confindustria conference
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning!
I greet you all, representatives of the business world who have come here in such great number. I thank your President, Mister Squinzi, as well as Mister Ghizzoni and Mistress Marcegaglia for the words they have offered. With this gathering, which represents a first in history for your Association, your aim is to confirm a commitment: to contributing through your work toward a more just society that is closer to the needs of humanity. Your desire is to reflect together on the ethics of doing business; together, you have decided to strengthen your focus on the values which are the backbone of your formative programmes, in order to promote the territory and the promotion of social relationships, and to allow for a concrete alternative to the consumerist model of profit at all costs.
Working together, is the expression that you have chosen as your guide and orientation. It inspires you to collaborate, share and prepare the way for relationships governed by a common sense of responsibility. This paves the way for new strategies, new styles and new attitudes. How different our lives would be if indeed we were to learn, day by day, to work, to think and to build together!
In the complex world of enterprise, working together means investing in projects that involve subjects that are often forgotten or neglected. Among these, first of all, are families, the focus of humanity, in which the experience of work, the sacrifice that feeds it and the benefits derived from it find sense and value. Together with families, we cannot forget the weakest and most marginalized categories, such as the elderly, who can still contribute resources and energies toward actively collaborating, but who are too often neglected as though they were useless or unproductive. And what of all the potential workers, especially the young who, as prisoners of precarious employment or long periods of unemployment, are not endowed with a wealth of work experience or a fair wage which would give them the dignity of which they sometimes feel deprived?
Together, all these strengths can make a difference for an enterprise that focuses on people, the quality of their relationships, the truth of their commitment to building a world of justice, a world that is truly committed to all people. In fact, working together means focusing the work not on the solitary genius of one person, but on the collaboration that exists between many people. In other words, it means building networks that value the gifts of all, without however neglecting the unique and non-repeatable nature of each individual. At the centre of every enterprise therefore, the focus should be the person: not an abstract concept, an ideal, a theory, but that which is concrete, including his dreams, his needs, his hopes and his labours.
Concrete attention to the person involves a series of important choices: it means giving each person that which is his due, tearing mothers and fathers of families away from the anxiety of not being able to provide a future, much less the necessities of the present to their children; it means knowing how to direct, but also knowing how to listen, to share projects and ideas with humility and trust; it means working in such a way that labours create other work, responsibilities create other responsiblities, hope creates more hope, above all for younger generations who need this gift more than ever before.
In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I issued a challenge to support one another, to make every experience a shared opportunity for a better chance of meeting and of being in solidarity with others (EG, 87). Faced with so many barriers of injustice, loneliness, mistrust and suspicions which still endure today, the world of work, of which you are the leading authors, is called to take courageous steps in order so that finding yourselves and to working together is not only a slogan, but a plan of action for the present and for the future.
Dear friends, you have a mobile vocation oriented toward producing wealth and toward improving the world for all people (Laudato Si', 129); you are therefore called to be builders of the common good and artisans of a new humanism of work. You are called to protect professionalism, and at the same time to pay attention to the conditions in which work is performed, lest such work should result in accidents and uncomfortable situations. Your path must always be guided by justice, which rejects the recommendations of favoritism and the dangerous deviations of dishonesty and easy compromises. The supreme law in everything you do must be attention to the dignity of the other, an absolute and indispensable value. This is the horizon of altruism that distinguishes your commitment: it will lead you to reject categorically any possibility that the dignity of the person may be trampled upon for the sake of production efficiency that masks individualistic myopia, individualism and thirst for profits. The enterprise that you represent must always be open to the broader meaning of life, which will in turn allow her to truly serve the common good, with its efforts to multiply all goods and to make them accessible to all people in the world (Evangelii Gaudium, 203). In fact, the common good is the compass that guides all productive activity so that an economy by all and for all can grow, one that is not insensitive to the eye of those who are in need (Sirach 4:1). It is indeed possible, as long as the simple proclamation of economic liberty does not prevail over the concrete freedom of mankind and his rights, as long as markets do not become absolute, but honour the demands of justice, and in the final analysis, the demands of the dignity of persons. There is no freedom without justice and justice cannot exist without respect for the dignity of each individual.
I thank you for your commitment for for all the good that you are doing and that you are able to do. May the Lord bless you, and I ask you, please - don't forget to pray for me. Thank you!
Now I would like to ask the Lord the bless you all, as well as your families and your enterprises.
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