Pope Calls for a Balance Between Economic Activity and Social Justice

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT]

"We need to ensure that our institutions are truly effective in the struggle against all these scourges. The number and complexity of the problems require that we possess technical instruments of verification. But this involves two risks. We can rest content with the bureaucratic exercise of drawing up long lists of good proposals -- goals, objectives and statistical indicators -- or we can think that a single theoretical and aprioristic solution will provide an answer to all these challenges.

It must never be forgotten that political and economic activity is only effective when it is understood as a prudential activity, guided by a perennial concept of justice and constantly conscious of the fact that above and beyond our plans and programs, we are dealing with real men and women who live, struggle and suffer, and are often forced to live in great poverty and deprived of all rights. [Applause]

To enable these real men and women to escape from extreme poverty, we must allow them to be dignified agents of their own destiny. Integral human development and the full exercise of human acts of dignity cannot be imposed. They must be built up and allowed to unfold for each individual for every family in communion with others."