CNS STORY: Vatican document calls for global authority to regulate markets

Excerpt:

While the Vatican document focused on financial issues, it envisioned a much wider potential role for the global political authority. The agenda also includes peace and security, disarmament and arms control, protection of human rights, and management of migration flows and food security, it said.

Establishing such an authority will be a delicate project and will no doubt come at a cost of "anguish and suffering" as countries give up particular powers, the document said. The authority should be set up gradually, on the basis of wide consultation and international agreements, and never imposed by force or coercion, it said.

The authority should operate on the principle of subsidiarity, intervening "only when individual, social or financial actors are intrinsically deficient in capacity, or cannot manage by themselves to do what is required of them," it said. Countries' specific identities would be fully respected, it said.

The authority should transcend special interests, and its decisions "should not be the result of the more developed countries' excessive power over the weaker countries" or the result of lobbying by nations or groups, it said.

"A long road still needs to be traveled before arriving at the creation of a public authority with universal jurisdiction. It would seem logical for the reform process to proceed with the United Nations as its reference," it said.

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