Also to Europe

The tone, the approach, are both realistic and reassuring as always. The problems have been re-examined to the light of the prospects and resources. Thus, the horizon is clear. The message for the World Day of Peace 2009 is marked by a specific outlook and by a concrete commitment. “The fight against poverty” is a concrete path leading to the major objective that is peace. This, far from being an abstract ideal, stems from both a political and economic commitment, as well as from a cultural and civil one. This is why Europe is specifically involved. The Pope’s global perspective that gives primary attention to the world’s poor population, is all the more relevant in these times marked by an unprecedented crisis. This crisis does not affect globalization; rather, it occurs in the realm of globalization whose problems and potentials are brought out in the message with great equilibrium, shedding light upon its “ambivalence”. Set against this framework, the message clearly enters the realm of the new century. We are distant from the traditional “Third-Worldist” approaches. The message “clears the field from the illusion that a policy of mere redistribution of existing wealth can definitively resolve the problem must be set aside. In a modern economy, the value of assets is utterly dependent on the capacity to generate revenue in the present and the future. Wealth creation therefore becomes an inescapable duty, which must be kept in mind if the fight against material poverty is to be effective in the long term”. “Policies which place too much emphasis on assistance underlie many of the failures in providing aid to poor countries”. It is therefore necessary that new processes are triggered also in Europe. These can only stem from partnerships between the rich and the poor countries, thus overcoming old-dated technocratic approaches: “population is proving to be an asset, not a factor that contributes to poverty”, the pope recalled. This is another fact that proves wrong the many beliefs and forecasts made in the second half of the twentieth century. Thus the time has come to look ahead: this must be done especially in Europe and in Western societies, whose responsibilities the Pope sheds light upon from two different angles. Firstly, when in the words of Paul VI he condemns “moral under-development”, and the “over-development” described by John Paul II. Secondly, he points out that development is basically a cultural phenomenon and that culture is born and develops in the civil realm. Respite and far-sightedness are needed to understand the crisis and its resolution: “This lowering of the objectives of global finance to the very short term reduces its capacity to function as a bridge between the present and the future, and as a stimulus to the creation of new opportunities for production and for work in the long term. Finance limited in this way to the short and very short term becomes dangerous for everyone, even for those who benefit when the markets perform well”.