Pope's book accuses rich nations of robbery

John Hooper in Rome
Thursday April 5, 2007
The Guardian

Pope Benedict appeared to reach out to the anti-globalisation movement yesterday, attacking rich nations for having "plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions of the world.
An extract published from his first book since being elected pope highlighted the passionately anti-materialistic and anti-capitalist aspects of his thinking. Unexpectedly, the Pope also approvingly cited Karl Marx and his analysis of contemporary man as a victim of alienation.
The Pope's 400-page book, entitled Jesus of Nazareth, is to be published on April 16, his 80th birthday. Yesterday the newspaper Corriere della Sera, which is owned by the book's publishers, Rizzoli, presented a lengthy extract. It includes Benedict's thoughts on the parable of the Good Samaritan, who went to the aid of a traveller shunned by other passers-by after he had been stripped and beaten by robbers. While many commentators accuse the rich nations of not acting like the Samaritan, the Pope goes a big step further and compares them to the thieves.

"If we apply [the story] to the dimensions of globalised society we see how the peoples of Africa, who have been plundered and sacked, see us from close-up," he wrote. "Our style of life [and] the history in which we are involved has stripped them and continues to strip them."
The Pope wrote that the damage was not just material. "We have wounded them spiritually too," he said. "Instead of giving them God - and thereby welcoming in from their traditions all that is precious and great - we have brought them the cynicism of a world without God in which only power and profit count."

His judgment is bound to be seen as a condemnation of colonialism. But it could also be read as a confession of the failures of the Roman Catholic church's own missionary activity, which often followed in the wake of conquest and colonisation.

Pope Benedict went on to say that the poor of the developing world were not the only people who could be regarded as victims in need of help from a Good Samaritan. He said narcotics, people-trafficking and sex tourism had "stripped and tormented" many, leaving them "empty even in [a world of] material abundance".

Describing humanity's alienation, Marx had "provided a clear image of the man who has fallen victim to brigands". But the Pope said he had failed to get to the nub of the issue "because he only developed his thoughts in the material sphere".

The emptiness of modern life is a theme to which Benedict has warmed. He told a congregation at a Palm Sunday service that "earnings, success and career must not be the ultimate scope of life". He used the same sermon to warn of damnation for those who took backhanders in business or politics, saying that only those with hands not "soiled with corruption" could expect to reach God.

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Reflections:

As much as many would like to condemn the Pope’s comments, there is no doubt there is an element of truth in what he had said.

The very fact that the rich nations has got stronger, bigger, better and wealthier year in year out, compared to the fact that the developing nations have stagnated economies or even economies that are still in the trend of a decline, proves to us this very fact.

It is in fact not the capability of these rich nations that propelled them to economic excellence, but their smart use of these developing nations, using them as a money-making machine, and when they are no longer of use, chucking them aside and leaving them to fend their own problems.

Most rich nations today are not really interested in helping develop the countries themselves but instead, they pump in huge amounts of money because they feel that it has the potential to develop into a nation where it could generate huge amounts of profits for their own country. Thus they are not sincere in their monetary aid of these poor countries, but instead, they are interested in the future profits that they could be making.

Take China and India as an example. China and India have two of the world’s most rapid economic development, and could potentially world superpowers. The very fact that most countries have not provided much monetary investments or aid to China and India many years before this, say 20 years ago, was the fact that these countries did not bring as much promise as a business venture as it does today. Today, these two economies are developing and improving so rapidly that everyone wants a share of the profits.

We also see how the rich nations are typical hypocrites. Many nations cast aside China when it was a Communist state. Even when the ideals of communism collapsed in China, these countries did not want to have anything to do with China, until today. Why is this so? Because China provides the perfect business venture and opportunity to make it big.

This goes to prove the fact that many countries are more interested in making money than anything else.

Meanwhile, the poor countries, majority of which located in Africa, continue to remain poor. Rarely has a poor country developed into a country with a decent economy. The fact that a country can develop into a country with a decent economy is due to the fact that it possess a different characteristic. This characteristic could be the abundance of natural resources such as steel and oil, or the geographic location of the country. Other than those facts, no country, and no politician, with the right frame of mind, would contribute money to invest on a nation that provides no promise of huge returns in profits.

These poor countries are then left aside. They have many groups of people warring among themselves, and their political leaders change every now and then. There is not much stability. And this would result in economic instability as well. Although international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank have in one way or another tried to help or are considering to help this countries, the fact is the impact that these organizations make are very little, or maybe none at all, and in some cases, have worsen the situations.

However, with such facts placed right before us, we still have no valid grounds to accuse these nations of robbing the developing nations.

The rich nations have not stole the money of these nations. They have done nothing wrong to these countries and the only thing that they did was to look by the side and not doing anything.

The Pope is thus, wrong, in the comparison of these nations to that of thieves. Thieves steal. These rich nations don’t. They just do nothing.

As much as these rich nations did nothing wrong, perhaps it would be morally right if they tried to be the “Good Samaritan” that the pope talks about. The idea of globalization is to bring the whole world closer together. What kind of globalization would we have if we have only the rich countries getting closer to each other, and the poor nations being outcasts? Perhaps, these countries could contribute a small part of their money to fund the development of these countries, to first bring the situations in these countries to stability and then from there on, allow these countries to develop.

Thus, on the whole, the pope is right at one thing, that the rich nations have failed to be the Good Samaritan in helping the poor to develop. But he is wrong to claim that the rich nations have robbed the poor nations. Also, if globalization was to proceed on the right track, then richer nations should do their part to bring stability to countries where stability had been non-existent previously.