In an address to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on April 29, the pope insisted that it was possible to create "a family-friendly society" despite major cultural and economic obstacles.

"Family-friendly social, economic, and cultural policies need to be promoted in all countries," he said.

"These include, for example, policies that make it possible to harmonise family and work; fiscal policies that recognise family burdens and support the educational functions of families by adopting appropriate instruments of fiscal equity; policies that welcome life; and social, psychological, and health services centred on support for couple and parental relationships."

He added: "A ‘family-friendly' society is possible. Because society is born and evolves with the family. Not everything is attributable to a contract, nor can everything be imposed by command."

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Nationalism that compromises international cooperation, mutual respect and the sustainable development goals of the United Nations is part of the growing problem.

In addition, nationalism that neglects the common good and the growing threat of nuclear confrontation risks cancelling the progress of the recent past and multiplies the risk of war, Francis told the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

Francis said the Church has always urged the love of one's own people and country while respecting the various cultures, customs and habits of other peoples.

However, he warned against excluding and hating others. This is when loving one's own people and country becomes "conflictual nationalism that raises walls, even racism or anti-Semitism," he said.

Francis also pointed out that often states are subservient to the interests of a dominant group, mainly for reasons of economic profit, which oppresses the ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities who are in their territory.

Instead, Francis suggested, "the way in which a nation welcomes migrants reveals its vision of human dignity and its relationship with humanity."

He urged welcoming with humanity people forced to leave their own countries - by protecting, promoting and integrating them.

Migrants are not a threat to the culture, customs and values of the host nation, Francis pointed out.

They also have a duty - to integrate into the receiving nation, by enriching the host while maintaining their identity.

Migration is a permanent feature of human history, affecting all nations Francis noted, while warning that a "nation state that arouses the nationalistic feelings of its own people against other nations or groups of people would fail in its mission".

History proves where such deviations lead to, he said.

The nation-state cannot be regarded as absolute and an island in relation to its surroundings and on its own, Francis said.

Nor can it provide its people with the common good and meet the great contemporary challenges of climate change, new slavery and peace.

In Francis's view, a cooperative vision among nations requires the relaunching of multilateralism.

"Humanity would thus avoid the threat of recourse to armed conflicts whenever a dispute arises between nation-states, as well as evading the danger of economic and ideological colonisation of the superpowers, avoiding the overwhelming of the strongest over the weakest, and paying attention to the global dimension without losing sight of the local, national and regional dimensions."

Source

• Vatican News
• Image: LifeSite

Bank of Montreal senior manager Joseph Mari yesterday presented the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) with an overview of the role crypto-currencies play in money laundering.

He also explained blockchain's potential in the money-laundering and slavery fight.

Pope Francis has made slavery a top priority of his pontificate and helped inspire the recent PASS efforts, according to an internal document provided to CoinDesk.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) says forced labour including human slave trading generates annual profits of approximately US$150 billion.

The profits are gleaned from more than 21 million men, women and children in forced labour, commercial sexual exploitation and forced economic exploitation.

The slaves are mostly engaged in domestic work, construction, manufacturing, mining and utilities, agriculture, forestry and fishing.

PASS has held workshops, seminars and plenary meetings and has a "core" recommendation to resettle slaves where they are found, if they so choose, rather than repatriate them.

"Blockchain and cryptocurrency need to be on their [PASS's] radar, it needs to be recognised as something that is current, is being utilised and, the quicker the learning curve is surmounted, the quicker we can start working towards the risks that are presented," Mari says.

Mari also presented PASS with the most recent results of Project Protect.

Project Protect was founded in 2015 to teach anti-money laundering (AML) officers how to identify transaction patterns that might suggest evidence of human trafficking.

It identified an increase in the use of crypto-currencies by slave traders in Canada and other regions.

The Project has worked with blockchain data startup Chainalysis and other financial institutions to create new methods to identify patterns in crypto-currency transactions that might indicate a slave has been purchased or is being advertised.

"... I'm just really stressing from an AML standpoint that this is something that has been going on for the better part of 10 years," Mari says.

"And its [bitcoin's] uses are diversifying across the board, in terms both positive and negative."

Mari described the potential impact the PASS event could have on jump-starting the fight against slavery transacted in crypto-currency:

"The quicker we can start coming to terms with the fact that this is something that is most likely going to be here for the foreseeable future, the quicker we can start getting towards mitigating the risk."

Source

• Coindesk
• Ethereum World News
• Image: bravda.bg

Archer is the President of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences.

She was speaking at the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, held at the Vatican this week.

The meeting focused on the theme "Towards a participatory society: new ways for social and cultural integration."

Delegates discussed societal exclusion, which manifests in different ways in different parts of the world.

It can affect the poor and economically disadvantaged, as well as migrants and refugees, religious minorities and people with disabilities.

Throughout the 20th century and the end of the 19th century, the response to the poorest of the poor was to provide them with absolute basic necessities, said Archer.

She said top down approaches that focus on basic needs like food and shelter don't address needs like societal participation and inclusion.

Finding solutions that address these needs is a major challenge, she said.

"When you have a population of extreme poverty, what do you do? You give them welfare.

"The Pope doesn't want the simplistic solution of just giving them money, because it doesn't last forever anyway," she said.

Pope Francis sent a message to the academy encouraging them in their plenary session and urging them, according to the Church's social doctrine, to find "ways to apply in practice fraternity as the governing principle of the economic order."

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Crux
• Image: Down with Tyranny