VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI called Tuesday for a new world financial order guided by ethics and the search for the common good, denouncing the profit-at-all-cost mentality blamed for bringing about the global financial meltdown. In the third encyclical of his pontificate, Benedict pressed for reform of the United Nations and international economic and financial institutions to give poorer countries more of a say in international policy.
“There is urgent need (for) a true world political authority” that can manage the global economy, guarantee the environment is protected, ensure world peace and bring about food security for the poor, he wrote.
The document, “Charity in Truth,” was in the works for two years, and its publication was repeatedly delayed to incorporate the fallout from the crisis.
“The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics, but an ethics which is people centered,” Benedict wrote. The Associated Press
