Pope: People must always be at center of banking and financial systems

Pope Leo XIV highlighted the importance of always placing people at the center of banking and financial systems and urged those who work in these fields to make charity the guiding principle of their strategic choices, on Saturday, May 16.

“The spirit of your foundations reminds everyone, in particular, that what enters a bank in the first instance is not capital, but people, and that behind the numbers there are women and men, families who are in need of help” he said, in an address to employees and representatives of various Italian banks, whom he met at the Vatican.

“In a context in which the high level of computerization of financial tools imposes increasingly elaborate and artificial forms of mediation in interpersonal relationships, you — heirs to a great tradition of human attentiveness — are called to ensure that those who access your services do not feel abandoned to the coldness of algorithmic systems,” he continued.

He noted that behind these systems there need to be, “today as in the past,” people “ready to listen and eager to do good.”

Pope Leo XIV reflected on the origins and development of the various banks and credit unions represented, underlining how they all had the common objective of supporting entrepreneurship and public and private finance in different moments of Italian history.  

“Their beginnings, marked by courage and creativity, bear witness to the complementarity between savings and investment, private and public sectors, in the pursuit of the common good and of solid economic growth,” he said.

He explained that the financial institutions present have fostered, in different ways, a fair sharing and redistribution of wealth among individuals, businesses, and institutions, making its benefits more accessible to all.

The Pope emphasized that this is “a social function that fits well within the mission entrusted by God to humanity to be stewards of creation.”

Over the centuries, the Pope continued, the banking system has found itself at the center of economic and social development processes, becoming an increasingly complex reality that can influence people’s lives.

Due to this, he pointed out how this system has led to two possibilities: "On the one hand, to promote fair sharing for the general well-being; on the other, negatively, to foster selfish accumulation, a source of inequality and poverty.”