In an online videoconference with young entrepreneurs and students from all over the world, Pope Francis urged them to develop a new economic mentality set on social equality and environment.
“The future is the special moment when we feel called to recognize the urgency and beauty of the challenge that is presented,” he said.
According to the religious leader, it is necessary to reconcile this new economic model with environmental sustainability and social policies that eliminate social inequalities. “A time that reminds us that we are not condemned to economic models in which the immediate interest is profit and public policies that ignore their human, social and environmental costs”, he added.
Pope Francis recalled that after the Covid-19 crisis, one should not fall into the same mistakes that, in part, led to the current economic crisis. “The gravity of the current situation, which the covid pandemic puts even more in evidence, requires a person responsible for the awareness of all social actors. After the health crisis we are in, the worst reaction would be to fall even more into the consumption fever and new forms of selfish self-preservation ”, he warned.
The capitalist economic model has been targeted by Pope Francis on several occasions. Since arriving at the Vatican seven years ago, the pope has tried to fight social inequalities and the lack of concern for the environment, consequences of the present economic model.
“It is time, dear young people (…), to take the risk of promoting and stimulating models of development, progress and sustainability where people, but especially those excluded – in which I include Earth – are no longer, at best, a merely nominal, technical or functional presence, to become protagonists ”, he said.
Pope Francis explains that “a conversion of the priorities and the place of others (the disadvantaged) in politics and in the social order is required”, so it is possible to open a new chapter in history.
This three-day international videoconference was attended by about two thousand young entrepreneurs and students from 40 countries who wish to change the current economic models and promote a more just future.
