“Furthermore, young people entering the job market and recently unemployed adults presently face bleak prospects.”
Migrant workers, meanwhile, have been left exposed “to various forms of slavery and with no system of welfare to protect them.”
The pope observed that only one in three people working today “enjoys a system of social protection, or benefit from it only in limited ways,” while violence and organized crime are rising in many places.
“The only answer to this is an expansion of dignified employment opportunities,” the pope said. “Labor, in fact, is the foundation on which to build justice and solidarity in every community.”
He went on: “It is more urgent than ever to promote, throughout our world, decent and dignified working conditions, oriented to the common good and to the safeguarding of creation.”
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“The freedom of entrepreneurial initiatives needs to be ensured and supported; at the same time, efforts must be made to encourage a renewed sense of social responsibility, so that profit will not be the sole guiding criterion.”
Pope Francis encouraged all Catholic workers and entrepreneurs to strive for “a fair balance between economic freedom and social justice,” drawing on the “sure guidelines” found in the Church’s social doctrine.
Concluding his message, the pope wrote: “To government leaders and to all those charged with political and social responsibilities, to priests and pastoral workers, and to all men and women of goodwill, I make this appeal: let us walk together with courage and creativity on the path of intergenerational dialogue, education, and work.”
“May more and more men and women strive daily, with quiet humility and courage, to be artisans of peace. And may they be ever inspired and accompanied by the blessings of the God of peace!”
At a Dec. 21 Vatican press conference presenting the pope’s text, Cardinal Peter Turkson said that the 2022 message highlighted Pope Francis’ conviction that every individual can contribute to building peace.
“This means that everyone has a fundamental role to play in a single great creative project to write a new page of history,” the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development said. “A page of full of hope, peace, reconciliation.”