REUTERS: VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict said on Monday that the global financial crisis showed that faith in God trumped a lifetime spent pursuing material wealth.
"We see it now in the collapse of the great banks that money disappears, it's nothing," the Pontiff said.
The global financial turmoil, the worst since the Great Depression, has wiped away hundreds of billions of euros (dollars) in shareholder wealth and felled banking institutions that just months ago seemed untouchable.
The pontiff, using a biblical metaphor, said people who ignored the word of God to pursue wealth had effectively built their homes on sand instead of on a solid foundation of faith.
It was a possible reference to the collapse of the U.S. housing market, which triggered the financial crisis.
"Whoever builds his life on this reality, on material things, on success ... builds (his house) on sand. Only the word of God is the foundation of all reality," he said. [Source: Reuters] Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Sami Aboudi | October 6, 2008
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Pope: Financial Crisis Shows Futility of Money >>> | October 6, 2008
THE ECONOMIC TIMES (INDIA):
Financial Crisis Shows Need for Religion in Politics: Vatican: VATICAN CITY: The financial crisis sweeping the world economy proves the need for religion in politics, Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said on Tuesday.
"Politics needs religion," Cardinal Bertone said in a speech published by the Vatican mouthpiece L'Osservatore Romano. "When instead God is ignored, the ability to respect rights and recognise the common good begins to disappear."
Bertone, the Vatican's top diplomat and Pope Benedict XVI's right-hand man, told a conference sponsored by the US-based Aspen Institute: "Where people look solely for short-term profit, identifying it with good, they end up erasing the benefit itself."
The prelate said the "current financial crisis" and the "tragic outcomes of all political ideologies" were symptomatic of this lack.
He added: "To manage globalisation, politics not only needs an ethic inspired by religion, but also it needs for this religion to be rational. For that too, politics needs Christianity." >>> IST, Agencies | September 30, 2008
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