October 5, 2021
Statement by His Excellency Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher Secretary for Relations with States at the XV Ministerial Conference of UNCTAD “From inequality and vulnerability to prosperity for all”
October 5, 2021
The extreme inequality that has emerged in recent decades is underpinned by an individualistic ideology that has abandoned the notion of the common good in a common home with common horizons. Investment and prosperity have been delinked fromnotions of a social contract and a commitment to a caring society; rather, today they are perceived merely from the perspective of sources of profit. Pope Francis warned that “[r]adical individualism is a virus that is extremely difficult to eliminate, for it is clever. It makes us believe that everything consists in giving free rein to our own ambitions, as if by pursuing ever greater ambitions and creating safety nets we would somehow be serving the common good” (Fratelli tutti, 105)