Pursuing common good in economics is part of being pro-life, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Defending the dignity and sacredness of every human life requires working to create economic and social systems that promote the common good of all, Pope Francis said.

"If the defense of life is limited only to a few aspects or moments, or entirely denies the existential, social and cultural dimensions, it risks being ineffective and falling into the temptation of an ideological approach where abstract principles are defended, rather than concrete people," the pope said in a message Nov. 14.

"The quest for the common good and justice are central and indispensable aspects of any defense of every human life, especially the most fragile and defenseless, with respect for the entire ecosystem we inhabit," the pope said.

The message was read at the beginning of a conversation sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Life and featuring the economist Mariana Mazzucato and Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados.

The two women have been working together on the Bridgetown Initiative, a project to reform the global financial system with the "common good" as its main objective rather than individual profit. It recognizes capitalism as the financial system with the greatest chance of helping the most people, but insists governments have myriad tools at their disposal not simply to correct mistakes or fill gaps, but to direct spending and investment.

"We can find a way to put a man on the moon, but we cannot find a way to distribute the ample food and water that exists on earth," Mottley said. Those problems, as well as climate change mitigation and relief efforts, "require moral strategic leadership at a global level."

Mazzucato said one place to begin is with government procurements or purchasing agreements, which use a significant portion of local, regional and government spending. The contracts, she said, can and should insist that companies doing business with the government are environmentally friendly, pay workers well and reinvest a portion of their profits in research or manufacturing and not just in stock buybacks or payouts.

Pope Francis, who had met privately with the women earlier in the day, told participants at the evening conversation that "the common good is first and foremost a practice, made up of fraternal welcome and a common search for truth and justice."

"In our world, marked by so many conflicts and contrasts that are the fruit of the inability to look beyond particular interests," he said, "it is of great importance to recall the common good, one of the cornerstones of the social doctrine of the church."

The world, he said, needs "solid economic theories that take on and develop this theme in detail, so that it can become a principle that effectively inspires political choices -- as I indicated in my encyclical 'Laudato si'' -- and not merely a category much invoked in words but disregarded in deeds."

In a paper published in the Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Mazzucato argued that "the common good is not merely about maximizing the sum of aggregate individual interests, but about common interests and mutual concern."

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and host of the conversation, told the gathering that the "dramatic inequalities" between the world's richest and poorest people "are not the result of chance, but the bitter fruit of exasperated capitalism that has generated a hyper-individualist culture."

"Such a culture is undermining the push toward unity at its root, thus shattering the 'we' that is central to the common good for peaceful coexistence and a good life for all peoples," the archbishop said.