Absence of a plan opposing poverty; negative consequences for this emptiness within the family; the risk for a progressive enlargement of social exclusion: those three elements are this year’s "essential" characteristics of the VII Report on poverty and social exclusion. This morning, that was underlined by Msgr. Giuseppe Pasini, president of the Zancan Foundation. "In short he said, it is as though the history of our country was scattered with ‘good intentions’, but they were never formulated in an explicit, serious and systematic plan for fighting poverty, including the adoption of criteria and times for checking its effectiveness". Moreover, Caritas and the Zancan Foundation went on Pasini "don’t think the poverty problem may be solved by delegating it to private solidarity. The interventions of the private-social sector and of the Church itself are certainly useful and necessary, but by their own nature, they integrate the public intervention. Moreover, they tend to relate to specific sectors. Therefore, they have neither the ability nor the power to globally face the problem of poverty and its causes, nor the problem of assuring the poor answers on the rights’ level". "Therefore added Pasini, it is difficult to think that poverty may be overcome without a systematic plan involving the public institution itself".
