On 5 October 2020, our Group had a private audience with the Pope, in the Paolo VI Hall at the Vatican.
In the year that marks the 170th anniversary of the founding of CDP, the meeting was a moment of sharing and common reflection on our institution’s role and our daily work in promoting Italy’s growth.
The Holy Father had the following words for the CDP Group:
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen!
I warmly welcome you, and I thank the Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer for their kind words of introduction.
This meeting is taking place one hundred and seventy years after your institution was established. Beginning life as Cassa Piemontese, it changed its name to Cassa Depositi e Prestiti following the Nation’s political unification. Since then, the task of your Institute has been redesigned according to the evolution and changing needs of Italy, which requires constant investment, modernisation, assistance for local authorities, support for professional training and productivity.
These areas of development still require a generous commitment on your part today. Let us think of the social and economic challenges we still face as a result of this ongoing grave pandemic. We think of the phenomena that have had very significant repercussions, such as the decline of some forms of production, which will require renewal or radical transformations. Think of the changes that have taken place in the way goods are bought and sold, with the risk of trade and commerce becoming concentrated in the hands of a small number of global players. And this to the detriment of the specific regional characteristics and local professional skills that are so typical of Italy and Europe.
The social doctrine of the Church is in agreement with a vision where numerous investors can expect a fair return from funds raised, and then go on to channel that into financing initiatives that promote social and collective benefit. In principle, Christian thought is not against the idea of profit, rather it is against profit at any cost, against profit that forgets individuals, makes them slaves, reduces them to things among objects, to variables in a process that people cannot control in any way or which they cannot in any way object to.
The management of business always demands of everyone fair and transparent conduct, which does not give in to corruption. In carrying out one's responsibilities, it is necessary to know how to distinguish good from evil. Indeed, even in the area of economics and finance, upright intentions, transparency and the pursuit of good results are compatible and must never be separated. It is a question of identifying and courageously pursuing lines of action that respect, indeed, promote, the human person and society.
In your work, you are called to manage, day by day, with scrupulous care, the relations with the various organisations who turn to you for support. An institution such as yours is able to bear witness, in a tangible way, to a sensibility of solidarity, favouring the relaunching of the real economy, as a driving force for the development of people, families and society as a whole. In this way, too, we can accompany the gradual progress of a nation and serve the common good, pursuing the effort to multiply the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all (see Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 203).
This is my wish, which I share with you on the occasion of your anniversary, encouraging you to continue your activities with generosity. May the assistance of the Holy Spirit be at your side and make you builders of justice and peace. For those of you present here and all the members of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, I assure you of my remembrance in prayer and, while I also ask you to pray for me, I impart the Apostolic Blessing, which I extend from my heart to your family.
Source: vatican.va
Gallery
During the audience, we presented a collection of thoughts, photographs and drawings by CDP’s people and their children to Pope Francis
Browse the digital version of the book
