Card. Turkson, “Work is a vocation to be God’s partner. Business is aimed at the good of the human family”

“Business must take account of individual talents and satisfy the needs of humanity with authentic and sustainable goods, and do so in a spirit of service and solidarity towards the human family.” Card. Peter Turkson, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said this on the first day of the Pastoral Congress at the Dublin World Meeting of Families, which will continue until August 26^th. Introducing this evening’s panel on “The Vocation of the Business Leader: A Family Business Perspective,” the cardinal recalled that according to Amoris Laetitia “the family is a human institution desired and created by God for the care and continued existence of the human person. The human person is, therefore, created not only with dignity, in the image and likeness of God, but as male and female, capable through mutual collaboration to generate children and take care of them.”

If we understand “also the task of the human person to cultivate and maintain the earth in terms of work, then,” explains the cardinal, “this is an expression of his dignity as image of God, and hence work is understood as the vocation of the human person to be God’s partner, by putting the creation at the service of the needs of the human person, for the development and elevation of the needy and so that this ‘vocation’ may be understood as directed by the ‘gift of logic,’ which strives towards the universal destination of the goods of the Earth.” In this light, “business is a noble vocation that organizes and accomplishes the work of putting the creation and its resources at the service of the good of the human family in general.” Now, in this regard, “the family is a resource for the sustainability and the service of love for ‘our children and those who will come after us’.”