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Promotes Social Doctrine in Latin America Tour

QUITO, Ecuador, SEPT. 30, 2007 (Zenit.org).- A democracy without values, including the effort to fight poverty, is actually harmful to society, said the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Cardinal Renato Martino said that Saturday in Quito, at the inauguration of a conference on the social responsibilities of the governing class in light of Catholic social doctrine and in the context of Latin America’s political landscape.

The prelate is on a 12-day tour of Latin America, including stops in Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina, to present the major themes of the Church's social teachings.

During his discourse, the president of the Vatican dicastery said that authentic democracy is not only the result of following the rules, but rather the fruit of convictions about the values that inspire democratic procedures.

According to a communiqué from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Martino warned against the dangers and risks of a democracy represented by “the oligarchies that refuse to question their own supremacy and privileges," and by “groups that form around a de facto power, forgetting the freedom of citizens."

Doubting truth

The cardinal spoke of what he called a "democracy of Pilate, which in a more or less visible way, treats the question of truth with skeptical irony" and a "democracy of Nero or Barabbas, which puts truth up for vote, entrusting it to the cries of a leaderless group."

Cardinal Martino affirmed that the Church calls everyone to a nonviolent commitment in the fight against poverty, "without fueling ephemeral messianisms and popular demagogies, by making impossible promises."

According to the Church’s social doctrine, he added, the fight against poverty must be oriented according to the principles of social justice, solidarity and subsidiary, in order to not treat the poor as a problem, but as subjects and protagonists of a new future.