Pope: Social security systems must foster economic justice and right to work

Pope Leo XIV meets with a delegation from the Italian National Institute for Social Security, and urges national welfare systems to promote social responsibility and economic development.

Pope Leo XIV meets with INPS executives and staff (@Vatican Media)

Pope Leo XIV met on Friday with executives and employees of the Italian National Institute for Social Security (INPS), which acts as Italy’s national pension system.

In his address, the Pope said the agency serves an important social role by ensuring the fair distribution of wealth to meet the needs of many vulnerable people in situations of hardship.

This role, he said, gives INPS “the possibility of acting effectively in promoting a social responsibility that combines economic development and community cohesion, guiding choices toward the common good.”

Pope Leo went on to reflect on the disparity between wealth and distribution, noting that much wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few people.

“Many hundreds of millions of people across the planet,” he said, “are immersed in extreme poverty and lack food, shelter, medical care, schools, electricity, drinking water, and indispensable sanitary services.”

Yet, added the Pope, inequality is not a result of determinism, but rather requires honesty and a moral compass to address the equitable distribution of resources.

“Within such a horizon,” he said, “the response to the concrete needs of persons has always been at the center of the attention of the Catholic Church, both as regards the world of work and assistance to the needy.”

Pope Leo XIV recalled the long history of Catholic Social Teaching, which his predecessor and namesake, Pope Leo XIII, did much to express in his encyclical, Rerum novarum.

The late 19th century Pope called for social security and social assistance to ensure that workers never lack work and may have access to a system that provides for their needs in case of illness, accident, or old age.

Since then, Pope St. John XXIII, Pope St. Paul VI, Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI have all upheld people’s human right to receive welfare assistance in case of a life-event that prohibits them from working.

However, noted Pope Leo XIV, both Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI offered a “critique of welfare dependency”.

In the social magisterium of Pope Francis, especially in Fratelli tutti, the Social Doctrine of the Church raises the “welfare state to the status of a true universal right.”

“The model proposed is that of a system of solidaristic security, based on the principles of subsidiarity, social responsibility, and human fraternity, always with the aim of directing welfare intervention so as to allow everyone ‘a dignified life through work’,” said Pope Leo.

The Pope thanked the Italian pension agency for its efforts to protect the weakest and make strategic investments in the formation of young people.

“Even in the face of the need to guarantee the sustainability of the system,” he said, “your commitment must always be directed also toward safeguarding its solidaristic fabric and its fairness, both at the pension level and in accompanying the worker along his or her professional path.”

The labor system of the 21st century has changed drastically, said the Pope, recalling the rise of the gig economy, globalization leading to outsourcing of jobs, and increasing precariousness in career paths.

In conclusion, Pope Leo XIV called on the executives and employees of INPS to keep the human person at the center of their efforts, so that “no one may lack dignity and freedom to live an authentically human life.”

Devin Watkins
Source: vaticannews.va/en