‘Small is beautiful,’ Pope says in message to economic forum

October 14, 2015

Citing Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum and three writers on economics-- Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo, Father Luigi Sturzo, and E. F. Schumacher-- Pope Francis emphasized that “small is beautiful” in a message to the Third World Forum of Local Economic Development, which is taking place in Turin.

“The recurring world crises have demonstrated that the economic decisions that, in general, seek to promote the progress of all through the generation of new consumption and the permanent increase in profit are unsustainable,” as well as “per se immoral,” since they set aside questions about justice and the common good, the Pope said.

An emphasis on the local, he continued, fosters “truly free” businesses and economies: “free from ideology, free from political manipulation, and above all free from the law of profit at any cost and the perpetual expansion of business, to be truly at the service of all and to reintegrate the excluded into society.”

 

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Further information:

• The Pope praises local development (VIS)
• Messaggio del Santo Padre ai partecipanti al III Forum Mondiale dello Sviluppo Economico Locale (Holy See Press Office)
• Rerum Novarum (1891)
• Third World Forum of Local Economic Development