The Enzyme of Communion

Last Saturday, Pope Francis met with the participants of the Meeting “Economy and Communion,” entrepreneurial association, based on fraternity and profit sharing, that is a part of the Focolare Movement. They were received in audience on the occasion of the association’s 25th anniversary. The Pope recalled the invitation made then by Chiara Lubich in Brazil: “In the face of the scandal of inequality in the city of São Paulo, she asked entrepreneurs to become agents of communion.

She invited you to be creative, skillful, but not only that.” Economy and communion together become even more beautiful. “Certainly, the economy becomes more beautiful, but communion is also more beautiful because the spiritual communion of hearts is even fuller when it becomes the communion of goods, of talents, of profits.”

The Pope recommended that “quality” be given the priority over “quantity”: “Every time people, peoples and even the Church have thought of saving the world in numbers, they have produced power structures, forgetting the poor. We save our economy by being simply salt and leaven.” How can we preserve the “enzyme” of communion? Through the principle of “reciprocity”, the same one that was once applied to keep the yeast. “The economy of communion will have a future if you give it to everyone and it does not remain only inside your ‘house’.

Give it to everyone, firstly to the poor and the young, who are those who need it most and know how to make the gift received bear fruit!” “ Today’s economy, the poor, the young—concluded Pope Francis—need, first of all, your spirit, your respectful and humble fraternity, your will to live and, only then, your money.“