Pope says financial crisis demands rethink on global poverty

Pope Benedict XVI ushered in 2009, a year "marked by uncertainty and concern for the future", by calling for a major overhaul of the current global economic system and by urging individuals to live with "moderation and solidarity".

The "growing social and economic crisis" figured in all three homilies the Pope delivered on New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and Epiphany (6 January). He noted that "dark clouds are gathering over our future", but said they could be overcome by hope in Christ and a change of lifestyle. "It is a crisis that requires greater moderation and solidarity from everyone, in order especially to help people and families in greater difficulty," the Pope said at Vespers on 31 December.

The next day at the 1 January Mass for the World Day of Peace and the Feast of the Mother of God, Pope Benedict said the crisis was the chance to establish "a ‘virtuous cycle' between the poverty one can ‘choose' and the poverty one must ‘fight'" - "an unjust poverty that oppresses so many men and women and threatens peace for all". He said this meant reducing "the gap between those who waste the superfluous and those who lack even the necessary" and rediscovering "moderation and solidarity, which are equally evangelical and universal values".

Commentators noted that the Pope's solution to the crisis stood in stark contrast to that offered by some Western leaders - including Italy's billionaire premier, Silvio Berlusconi - who have urged people not to change spending habits or their present style of living.

But the 81-year-old Pope went even further, suggesting that long-term changes in the economic system were also necessary in responding to the current global crisis.

"Are we are ready to read in its complexity a challenge for the future instead of just an emergency to which we provide short-term answers? Are we willing to profoundly revise the dominant model of development so as to correct it in a concerted and far-sighted way?" he asked, noting that more than just financial difficulties were at stake. "Such changes are needed to address the planet's environmental health and even more so our cultural and moral crises, whose symptoms have been visible for quite some time in every part of the world," the Pope said.

He later said that today's shadows, "however dark", could not dim the light of Christ, in his homily on Tuesday for the celebration of Epiphany. Pope Benedict lamented "the destructive hatred and violence that continue to shed blood in many regions of the world and man's selfishness and pretensions to be his own god, which leads sometimes to dangerous distortions of God's design about life and the human dignity in matter of the family and the harmony of creation". Quoting his encyclical Spe Salvi, he said that "even if we outwardly achieve nothing or seem powerless in the face of overwhelming hostile forces, it is the great hope based upon God's promises that gives us courage and directs our action in good times and bad.