Vatican City, Jul 6, 2009 / 15:50 pm
On July 4, just days before his social encyclical is set to be released, Pope Benedict XVI sent a letter regarding the upcoming G8 meeting to the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi. In his letter, he called for renewed international efforts to work together in order “to face current challenges” in front of mankind today.
The heads of State and Government of the Group of Eight industrialized countries (G8) are scheduled to meet in the Italian city of L'Aquila from July 8 to 10.
Pope Benedict recalled John Paul II’s conviction that “eradicating the causes of extreme poverty in the world” would depend upon “the most economically-advanced governments and States fully assuming the responsibility they bear towards all humanity.”
Acknowledging the millennium goal to eradicate extreme poverty around the globe by 2015, the Holy Father observed that “the financial and economic crisis that has struck the entire planet since the start of 2008 has altered the panorama, so that there is now a real risk not only that the hope of emerging from extreme poverty may be extinguished, but that people who until now benefited from some minimal material wellbeing risk falling into indigence.”