Pope Appeals For Battle On Want

Press, Volume C, Issue 29567, 17 July 1961, Page 7

Pope Appeals For Battle On Want

(N.Z. Press Association-Copyright) VATICAN CITY, July 15. Pope John yesterday called on the nations of the world to band together to fight hunger and poverty.

In a 20,000-word encyclical letter examining the social and economic problems of the age, the Pope said that “justice and humanity” demanded that the more prosperous nations should aid the underdeveloped. While recognising all that had been done, he called for greatly increased efforts tc supply capital and technical and professional aid and education —without strings. He approved socialisation —without its “negative aspects”—and workers’ participation at all levels. The letter marks the seventieth anniversary of Pope Leo Kill's “Rerum Novarum” (of new things), which is the Roman Catholic Church’s basic document on social and economic problems of the modern world. It is likely to establish itself as one of the great pronouncements of the Church and to have wide influence on Catholic communities throughout the world. The Pope called for “renewed scientific and technical effort on the part of man to deepen and extend his dominion over nature.” He said science and technology opened up “limited horizons” an< he deplored their use to provide “terrible instruments of ruin and death.” This wastage of effort was caused by mutual distrust, especially among world leaders who were inspired "by different or radically opposed concepts of life.” Some of these concepts denied the existence of a moral order, and so leaders met but failed to understand each other and used the “same words with different and opposite meanings.” The Pope expressed great concern for agriculture and the drift from the land. He called for harmonious development of economic systems to ensure that agricultural communities were not left behind urban ones, and urged that essential services be developed in rural areas. British United Press said the Pope gave substantial approval to socialisation, a term he used in its broadest meaning to include any collective effort, also by private groups. “It is the fruit and expression of a natural tend-

human beings, the tendency to join together to attain objectives which are beyond the capacity and means at the disposal of single individuals” Private ownership should not only be defended in principle, but extended in practice to as many people as possible in all social classes. He expressed his sadness over the plight of vast numbers of workers throughout the world who were paid wages “which condemn them and their families to sub-human conditions of life. In some of these countries, however, there stands in harsh and offensive contrast to the wants of the great majority the abundance and unbridled luxury of the privileged few. "In still other countries the present generation is compelled to undergo inhuman privations in order to increase the output of the national economy at a rate of acceleration which goes beyond the limits permitted by justice and humanity," he said.