Decent wages, dignity at work, no profit without morals - when it comes to reforming the unstable market economy, the Catholic church is leading where the British Labour party fears to tread. Will Hutton joined an extraordinary debate at the Vatican.
"For a man aged over 80, Pope Benedict XVI walks surprisingly quickly, racing into the Vatican's Salle Clemente yesterday lunchtime as if determined to show those waiting for him that he was compensating for being late. Then he took to the papal throne amid the splendour of the chapel, listening to the lead participants at an extraordinary Vatican conference on social capital and human development briefly reaffirm their commitment to the church's aim to champion a Catholic social doctrine.
As they spoke, he eyed up the rest of the room, an assembly of some of the Catholic world's richest and most influential businessmen and women along with a sprinkling of cardinals, archbishops and invited 'men and women of good will'. It was not to be a debate or a conversation; that had happened the previous day. Rather, it was his opportunity to give a carefully drafted pep talk to the Fondazione Centesimus Annus-Pro Pontifice - the foundation launched by his predecessor John Paul II to develop Catholic social policy - to think through how the church should react and try to reshape today's turbo capitalism, its unstable and powerful financial markets along with desperately widening inequality, and to listen to what we had to say on the great issues he confronts. He is working on a new papal encyclical on capitalism and society to be published later this year and this weekend was about giving him better ammunition." To read the rest of this article, go to What I told the Pope about how to shape golbal capitalism in the Guardian.