Benedict XVI went to Africa to deliver the post-synodal exhortation. Two years ago, the special synod for Africa that took place in Rome was very little covered by the media.  But it was «good work» – the pope then said – since it was able to mediate sufficiently between the political and spiritual dimensions. «And for me – the Pope said – this is also a reason for thanks because it makes the post-synodal document easier to draft». The penultimate act of that synod were the 57 final propositions delivered by the assembly of African bishops. The propositions touched on many topics including «greater ecclesial communion at all levels, encouraging cooperation within the Church», as well as an appeal to all those who are at war in Africa: «Stop the hostilities and be reconciled!» Another theme that was frequently discussed was the environment. Observing that there was «an irresponsible degradation and senseless destruction of the earth, which is ‘our mother’» the Synod Fathers noted  that «some businesses, governments and multinational and trans-national companies engage in business that pollute the environment, destroy flora and fauna, thus causing unprecedented erosion and desertification of large areas of arable land… in complicity with those who exercise political and economic leadership in Africa». The bishops also raised their voices on the issues that impact women. They rejected abortion and  so-called reproductive health rights of women, calling instead for the defense of the family and of human life.

All of these topics had been issued by the Pope during his short trip to Benin. «Africa is a continent of hope», Benedict XVI claimed. Hope is the key-word to understand the trip to Benin. As a key-speech was the one held in the Presidential Palace, on November, 19th. After the speech, the Pope moved to Ouidah, 43 kilometres far from the capital of Benin Cotonou from where – at the beginning of the 18th Century – every year 20 thousand slaves taken from all the Western Africa left to the Usa. In Ouidah, Benedict XVI finally deliver the post-synodal exhortation, Africae Munus, African Commitment. The commitment that Benedict XVI delivers to Africa is an important one. From Africa, he warns all the leaders of the world  against political corruption, scandals, instrumentalizing the name of God to justify violence and the individualism that generates despair.

Pope appeals to all political and economic leaders of African countries and the rest of the world to not to manipulate their people and not to deprive their  peoples of hope. «Do not cut them off from their future by mutilating their present! Adopt a courageous ethical approach to your responsibilities and, if you are believers, ask God to grant you wisdom!», the Pope said.

The background of African countries is filled with the Arab Spring and the recent - and Church sponsored – independence of the South Sudan. Neverthless the worries for the future of the Christians after the Arab Spring – especially in Egypt and Libya – the Pope favorably see to the claim of the people. During these last months – he said –  «many peoples have manifested their desire for liberty, their need for material security, and their wish to live in harmony according to their different ethnic groups and religions. Indeed, a new state has been born on your continent. Many conflicts have originated in man’s blindness, in his will to power and in political and economic interests which mock the dignity of people and of nature. Human beings aspire to liberty; then to live in dignity; they want good schools and food for their children, dignified hospitals to take care of the sick; they want to be respected; they demand transparent governance which does not confuse private and public interests; and above all they desire peace and justice».

Benin is an examplar country. Cardinal Bernardin Gantin is considered one of the father of the country – to him is dedicated the airport of Cotonou. And Catholicism had great part in the development of Benin, The former Archbishop of Cotonou, Isidore de Sousa, received special permission from the John Paul II to act as the effective leader of the country in the early 1990s, leading it through a transition from Marxism to democracy. Relationships between the Catholic Church and the State of Benin are wonderful, missionaries and Christian institutions make an appreciated job in the country. The 42,8 per cent of population of Benin is Christian, and the 27,1 per cent of these is Catholic. The rest is made up of faithful of other Confessions, mainly originated by the Lutheran reform. The 24,4 per cent of population is Muslim, and the rest of population belongs to ancient African creeds.

And all the representatives of those religions were sitting in front of Benedict XVI, together with the representatives of government and institution on November, 19th. The Pope contrasts the hope to the paradigm of the expert – who imposes his conclusions and proposes, at the end of the day, few useful solutions – and to the temptation to analyze the realities of Africa like a curious ethnologist or like someone who sees the vast resources only in terms of energy, minerals, agriculture and humanity («reductionist and disrespectful points of view which lead to the unhelpful “objectification” of Africa and her inhabitants»).

Hope is the key to understand two African realities. The first one deals with the sociopolitical and economical situation. The Pope says: «Human beings aspire to liberty; then to live in dignity; they want good schools and food for their children, dignified hospitals to take care of the sick; they want to be respected; they demand transparent governance which does not confuse private and public interests; and above all they desire peace and justice. At this time, there are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence which leads to misery and to death ». It is not a ill that affect just Africa: it affects all the world. And people want to understand, they do not want to be manipulated. No policy is absolutely right and no economical policy is neutral. But both policy and economy – the Pope admonishes – has to be done for the common good.

That is why Benedict repeatedly cried out in defense of the poor. During an open-air Mass on sunday in a soccer stadium in Benin’s capital, before some 40,000 wildly enthusiastic, dancing and singing locals, he said «Jesus wanted to identify himself with the poor» and the poor deserve respect because «through them, God shows us the way to Heaven». And in the Africae Munus Benedict called the church to act as a «sentinel», denouncing situations of injustice. The pontiff also took yet another swipe at neo-con ideologies. In his opening speech of the trip, he warned Africans that an «unconditional surrender to the laws of the market and of finance» is among the pathologies of modernity they would do well to avoid.

The second reality deals with the interreligious dialogue. How many wars had been fought in the name of God? «True interreligious dialogue – the Pope said – rejects humanly self-centered truth, because the one and only truth is in God. God is Truth. Hence, no religion, and no culture may justify appeal or recourse to intolerance and violence. Aggression is an outmoded relational form which appeals to superficial and ignoble instincts. To use the revealed word, the Sacred Scriptures or the name of God to justify our interests, our easy and convenient policies or our violence, is a very grave fault».

The challenge for Africa – outlined in the post-synodal exhortation – is to free Africa from his ills. First of all, Aids, to face by providing «everyone with access to treatments and medicines, taking account of uncertain situations! The Church, indeed, has been pleading for a long time for high quality medical treatment to be made available at minimum cost to all concern ». And then, illiteracy that «represents one of the principal obstacles to development. It is a scourge on a par with that of the pandemics. True, it does not kill directly, but it contributes actively to the marginalization of the person – which is a form of social death – and it blocks access to knowledge». More: «Africa’s memory is painfully scarred as a result of fratricidal conflicts between ethnic groups, the slave trade and colonization. Today too, the continent has to cope with rivalries and with new forms of enslavement and colonization». And also the intolerable treatment to which so many children in Africa are subjected: child soldiers, child prisoners, children forced into labour, children ill-treated on account of physical or mental handicap, children said to be witches or warlocks, children said to be serpents, children sold as sex slaves, traumatized children without any future prospects.

Was it a sort of Benedict XVI’s opening to theology of liberation? There is – obviously – some more in depth reason. Leaving Benin, the Pope asked: «Why should an African country not show the rest of the world the path to be taken towards living an authentic fraternity in justice, based on the greatness of the family and of labour? May Africans be able to experience reconciliation in peace and justice!» In a few years, Africa can become the most Catholic continent in the world. The Pope bets on the awakening of Africa, because it is in that awakening that resides the awakening of the Church. The Church that must push for Truth, Reconciliation, Dialogue, Care for Human Being. And Africa – with its Truth and Reconciliation commissions, with its experience of interreligious dialogue because of the cohabitation of several creeds, with his traditional care for human being – can indicate the path to follow to all the world. Africa is a continent of hope. Even for Christianity. Now more than ever.

The document of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is ponderously titled – «Towards reforming the international financial and monetary system in the context of global public authority» -  and its remarks were the most specific. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace calls for the advent of a new world centered on a universal political authority. The idea is not unprecedented – it was previously evoked in the 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris of John XXIII. The document also proposed taxation measures on financial transactions (and suggested that revenues could contribute to the creation of a “world reserve fund” to support the economies of countries hit by crisis); forms of recapitalization of banks with public funds that make support conditional on “virtuous” behavior aimed at developing the real economy; more effective management of financial shadow markets that are largely uncontrolled today. Such moves would be designed to make the global economy more responsive to the needs of the person, and – the document says – less «subordinated to the interests of countries that effectively enjoy a position of economic and financial advantage».

The path to the document had been long and transparent. In May, after a media briefing with journalists to announce a conference about the Mater et Magistra, mons. Mario Toso, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, announced the journalist that another media briefing was up to come, and it would have been about a future note for the reform of the monetary system. The Vatican Secretary of State was obviously informed. There had been several sketches of the document, as usual. The first sketch was drawn down by Michel Camdessus, former president of the International Monetary Fund, consultant of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and  part of the French delegation at the last G20 meeting. Then, document passed through several hand, bankers like Antonio Fazio – former governor of the Bank of Italy – and Ignazio Musu – economist and part of the advisory board of the Bank of Italy. The document shields itself with many citations from previous social encyclicals, and actually there is nothing so new.

In the Caritas in Veritate there is also a paragraph – the so-called «world authority paragraph» – in which it is stated that

«in the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a trongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the Principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority. . . »

Even Caritas in veritate had been sketched by many hands. An encyclical is such an important text – it is addressed to all the men of good will, and it is inspiration and part of the diplomatic work of the Holy See – that everybody would like to stress it to its own part. Among the people that glossed the Caritas in veritate,  there were economist like Stefano Zamagni and Luigino Bruni, but also the then governor of the Bank of Italy Mario Draghi and the then Italian minister of Economy Giulio Tremonti. Even Ettore Gotti Tedeschi had been involved in “glossing” the encyclical. He was still not president of the IOR (Institute for Religious Works), but he was already sure that the economical collapse came from the lack of children. No children, no creativity, no hope for the future, no economy: this simple four-words-speech-scheme is the Gotti Tedeschi’s favorite one.

After the release of the encyclical, there had been a sort of split on how to consider Caritas in veritate. Laissez-faire theorists were critical about some economical analysis, but always underlined how good was the “make more sons” line. Social economy theorists loved more the part that evoked the tunes of Populorum Progressio, the Paul VI social encyclical, in which the Pope claimed that «the new name of peace is development». The fight of interpretations was – and still is – intense. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was invited to talk to the meeting about Caritas in veritate without either informing  the Pontifical Council Justice and Peace. And the medias were in some way divided between these two lines of the encyclical, and were totally unaware that the truth is in the middle.

The most prophetical part of the encyclical was the so-called “world authority” paragraph. In fact, this has been interpreted by many Catholics a sort of “big leviathan”. But there is a deeper reason why the Holy See has been doing this proposal. And one can find these reason looking back in history to see when this world order had been stated. The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October of 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. The treaties resulted from the big diplomatic congress, thereby initiating a new system of political order in central Europe, later called Westphalian sovereignty, based upon the concept of a sovereign state governed by a sovereign. In the event, the treaties’ regulations became integral to the constitutional law of the Holy Roman Empire. It was there that the Holy See began to the fight not to be ejected from the concert of nations. It was there that the Holy See became to be subjected to the secularizing process. An increasing lack of influence that brought the Vatican State to be attacked and then defeated by national States, and to sign agreements with the States – which are the various Concordats.

Peace of Westphalia is quoted in the last document released by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and it is not a case. In the last years, many have talked about a New World Order. This new world order had been theorized in several think-tanks all over the world – from the Trilateral Commission to Bildeberg Group – and in the mean time finance prevailed on policy. The new world order will be an economic-based one. This seems to be the time for the change to come. So, while the Holy See was going on in signing Concordats with the national States, the world governance got always more supranational. The scenario is similar to the one of the Peace of Westphalia times. Within the Holy See, many are aware of the risk for the Church – and religions as well – to be put aside. This is the sense of the call for common rules and a world authority with universal competences.

When the document of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace had been released, there had been a slight disagreement within the Vatican Curia. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of the IOR, complained to have not been even consulted during the preparation of the document. No consulation was the fact that when one then delves into the analyses and specific proposals, it is also stunning how strong the divergence is between what is written in the document of the pontifical council for justice and peace and what has been maintained for some time in the financial commentaries published in L’Osservatore Romano by Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. For example, not even one line in the document attributes the global economic and financial crisis to the collapse in the birth rate and to the resulting higher and higher costs of population aging.

 Gotti Tedeschi did not remain silent. On November 4  L’Osservatore Romano published an editorial by him that reads like a complete repudiation of the document of the Pontifical Council for justice and Peace. Gotti Tedeschi wrote that «the true origins of the collapse of birthrates and the consequences of the increase of taxes on the GDP to absorb the costs of the ageing of the population were wrongly interpreted. The effects of the decisions made to compensate for these phenomena were underestimated, especially with the de-localization of production and consumer debt». For the president of IOR,  «to deflate the total debt – public, banking, business and family – and bring it back to pre-crisis levels, that is, to around 40% less, it is possible, though not advisable, to cancel a part of the debt with a type of “preventive agreement,” where creditors are paid at 60%».

More. Someone inside the Roman Curia – sources whisper that it was Gotti Tedeschi himself, very active indeed (he also wrote down an article for the Italian magazine Tempi) – complained about the document with the cardinal Bertone, secretary of State. Medias report that Bertone complained to have not been even informed by document. It was not true, since he had been constantly kept informed of the document. And this is what he said, sources from inside the Curia report. Probably, the truth is in the middle: pressed by the vain discontents memeber of the Curia that were protesting, Bertone said that he knew about the document, not about his contents, and he managed a summit to solve the question. The news about a summit convened in the Secretariat of State on November, 4^th leaked to the press. The conclusion of the summit was that this binding order would be transmitted to all of the offices of the curia: from that point on, nothing in writing would be released unless it had been inspected and authorized by the Secretariat of State.

This is how the red alarm for the new document of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has been defused. In the mean time, very few know about the international activities of the Holy See, and the financial transparency brought on with the establishment of the Authority for Financial Information can have some contraindication. The game is on the international impact of the Holy See. The same game the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace played by asking for an World Authority with Universal Competences. Since the world is now globally ruled, the Holy See want to give is contribution to write common rules. In order these common rules will be for the common good of humanity, and not just for the good of few. Will this commitment be consumed in the bonfire of vanities?