
Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Lesley-Anne Knight with Archbishop Marx (left) and Jim Wallis. Credit: Caritas
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By Lesley-Anne Knight, Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis
Last year at Davos an absence of values within society – and especially within the business world – was identified as a key contributory factor behind the global financial crisis. In the words of some commentators, it was as much a crisis of values as an economic crisis.
This year the focus on values has continued as participants seek to identify the values that are lacking in society and, more importantly, how they can be implemented.
As a part of this process, I was invited along with representatives of other world religions to contribute to a special publication entitled “Faith and the Global Agenda: Values for the Post Crisis Economy”. The publication was officially launched at a press conference in Davos on Thursday at which I was joined by fellow contributors the Archbishop of Munich, Dr Reinhard Marx; Jim Wallis, President and CEO of Sojourners; Justice Muhammad Taqi Usmani from Pakistan. The press conference was chaired by John J DeGioia President of Georgetown University who collaborated with the World Economic Forum in the production of the report.
Discussion on values was kicked off at a session on the opening day of the meeting in a forum on “Rethinking Values in the Post-Crisis World” which highlighted how individual economic incentives and short-term motivations had overwhelmed responsibility to the common good, eroding trust.
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