“Poverty is the greatest scandal and scourge of mankind”: so declared Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, in his speech to the Conference on globalization promoted by the UK’s Ministry of the Treasury on 16 February. The summit was attended by government representatives, members of international financial institutions, NGOs and representatives of religious communities. “States said the cardinal fail if they are incapable of liberating peoples from poverty, and if they don’t pay enough to ensure that prosperity is fairly distributed so that the whole population may benefit from it”. Murphy-O’Connor expressed his personal support and that that of the Holy See for the “International Finance Facility” (IFF), a proposal of the British Government to attract and make immediately available finance for development, guaranteed by long-term pledges made by the countries of the northern hemisphere. “I think he said – that the IFF is a courageous opportunity that can make a big difference” since it can be “a means” to achieve those objectives that “the United Nations gave to the international community in 2000”: halving poverty by 2015.
