Healthcare, education, security – these are the linchpins of any nation which should not be subject to making a profit. Economist Luigino Bruni, one of the experts Pope Francis called to be part of the Vatican Covid-19 Commission, is convinced that the lesson of the pandemic will help us rediscover the profound truth connected with the expression "common good". This is so because, as he believes, everything is fundamentally a common good: politics in its true sense, the economy which looks to humanity before seeking to make a profit. In this new global vision that can be born after the pandemic, the Church, he states, must make itself a "guarantor" of this collective patrimony, in so far as it is lies outside the logic of commerce. Bruni's hope is that this experience, conditioned by a virus that has no boundaries, will help us not forget "the importance of human cooperation and global solidarity".
You are part of the Vatican COVID 19 Commission, Pope
Francis’ response mechanism to an unprecedented virus. What do you personally
hope to learn from this experience? In what way do you think society as a whole
can be inspired by the work of the Commission?
R. – The most important thing I have learned from this
experience is the importance of the principle of precaution for the common
good. Absent for the most part in the initial phase of the epidemic, the
principle of precaution, one of the pillars of the Church’s social doctrine,
tells us something extremely important. The principle of precaution is lived
obsessively on the individual level (it’s enough to think of the insurance
companies which seem to be taking over the world), but is completely absent on
the collective level, and thus makes 21st century society extremely
vulnerable. This is why those countries which have preserved a bit of a welfare
state have demonstrated themselves a lot stronger than those governed entirely
by the market And then the common good: since a common evil has revealed to us
what the common good is, so has the pandemic forced us to see that the common
good requires community, and not only the market. Health, safety, and education
cannot be left to the game of profit.
Pope Francis asked the COVID 19 Commission to prepare
the future instead of prepare for it. What should be
the role of the Catholic Church as an institution in this endeavor?
R. – The Catholic Church is one of the few (if not the
only) institution that guarantees and safeguards the global common good. Having
no private interests, it can pursue the good of all. It is because of this that
she has a vast hearing. For the same reason, she has a responsibility to
exercise it on a global scale.
What personal lessons (if any) have you derived from
the experience of the pandemic? What concrete changes do you hope to see after
this crisis both personally and globally?
R. – The first lesson is the value of relational
goods. Not being able to exchange hugs in these months, I have rediscovered the
value of an embrace and of contact. Secondly, we can and must have many online
meetings and working remotely, but for important decisions and for decisive
meetings, the internet does not suffice. Physical presence is necessary. So,
the virtual boom is making us discover the importance of flesh and blood
contact and the intelligence of the human body. I hope that we do not forget
the lessons learned in these months (because people forget very quickly), in
particular the importance of politics as we have rediscovered in these months
(as the art of the common good against a common evil), and that we do not
forget the importance of human cooperation and global solidarity.
Preparing for the post-Covid world includes forming
future generations, who will be forced to make decisions that forge new paths.
In this sense, can education be considered only as a “cost” to reduce, even in
times of crisis?
R. – Education, above all that of children and young
people, is much more than an “expense”… It is a collective investment with the
highest rate of social return. I hope that in those countries where schools are
still closed, a national holiday will be designated when they are reopened.
Democracy begins at the school desk and there it is born again in each
generation. The first heritage (patres munus) that we pass on through
the generations is that of education.
Tens of millions of children around the world do not
have access to education. Can article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights be ignored, which affirms that everyone has the right to free and
mandatory education, at least regarding elementary education?
R. – Clearly this must not be ignored, but we cannot
ask that the cost of education be entirely sustained by countries without
sufficient resources. We must quickly give life to a new international
cooperation under the slogan: “educating children and adolescents is a global
common good”, where countries with more resources help those will fewer
resources so that the right to free education becomes real. This pandemic has
shown us that the world is a large community. We must transform this common
evil into new common, global goods.
Educational budgets have undergone sometimes drastic
cuts even in rich countries. Could there really be a desire not to invest in
future generations?
R. – If economic logic takes over, reasoning such as
this will increase: “Why should I do something for future generations? What
have they done for me?” If do ut des ‘(I’ll give something
only if I get something out of it), the commercial mantra, becomes the new
logic of nations, we will always invest less in education, and we will always
create more debt which today’s children will pay off. We must become generous
once again and cultivate non-economic virtues such as compassion, meekness, and
generosity.
Though it finds itself in economic difficulty, the
Catholic Church is on the front lines offering education to the poorest. As
we’ve seen during this pandemic, lockdowns have had a considerable impact on
Catholic schools. But the Church continues to welcome everyone, without
distinctions based on creed, making space for encounter and dialogue. How
important is this aspect?
R. – The Church has always been an institution for the
common good. Luke’s parable does not tells us about the faith of the half-dead
man who the Good Samaritan assisted. It is precisely during the gravest crises
that the Church rediscovers her vocation as Mater et magister (Mother
and teacher), that the esteem of non-Christians grows toward her, that the sea
that gathers everything in, then gives everything to everyone, above all to the
poorest. The Church has always known, after all, that the indicator of every
common good is the condition of the poorest.
What contribution can education about religion and
religions offer young people, especially in a world increasingly driven by
divisions and which fosters the engagement of fear and tension?
R. – That depends on how they are taught. The ethical
dimension which exists in every religion is not enough. The main teaching that
religions can offer today regards the interior life and spirituality, because
our generation, in the space of just a few decades, has squandered a
thousand-year-old heritage which contained ancient wisdom and popular piety.
The world’s religions must help the young and everyone else to rewrite a new
“grammar” of the interior life. If they do not do that, depression will become
the plague of the 21st century.
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