G20 Leaders Summit - London
Leaders from the G20 countries - responsible for 85% of the world’s output - met in London in an attempt to stabilise global financial systems.
The summit took place on 2 April 2009.
Cardinal welcomes Pope Benedict's letter to PM Gordon Brown
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has welcomed the "shared commitment" of the Holy Father and Prime Minister Gordon Brown to tackling poverty in an effort to address the global financial crisis:
"I welcome the exchange of correspondence between His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI and the Prime Minister. It illustrates vividly the shared commitment to tackling poverty that must be at the heart of our response to the financial crisis."
Official G20 communique
On 2 April 2009, the G20 leaders agreed a global plan for recovery and reform.
The leaders pledged an additional $1.1 trillion programme of support to restore credit, growth and jobs in the world economy.
Click to read the full G20 communique issued at the close of the G20 London Summit.
Religious leaders write to G20
Religious leaders in Britain, including Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Cardinal Keith O’Brien, have urged the G20 leaders not to forget their commitments to the world’s poorest people in the current economic crisis.
In a communiqué issued a week before the G20 meeting, they call on political leaders to consider the moral issues at the root of the current financial crisis, and to pay special attention to the needs of poor, marginalised and vulnerable people: "to forget their needs would be to compound regrettable past failures with needless future injustices".
Attention is drawn to promises made by the international community in “easier times” which now risk being “postponed by the pressing concern to rectify market failures”. “Even in these difficult times we strongly urge the leaders of the G20 to hold fast to the commitments they have made to the world’s poorest people.”
Pope Benedict writes to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown
"Renewed faith in the human person, which must shape every step towards the solution of the crisis, will be best put into practice through a courageous and generous strengthening of international cooperation, capable of promoting a truly humane and integral development. Positive faith in the human person, and above all faith in the poorest men and women – of Africa and other regions of the world affected by extreme poverty – is what is needed if we are truly to come through the crisis once and for all, without turning our back on any region, and if we are definitively to prevent any recurrence of a situation similar to that in which we find ourselves today."
Pope Benedict XVI
Read/download
Pope Benedict's letter to the Prime Minister and Gordon Brown's response (pdf)
Links
Gordon Brown responds to Pope Benedict's letter
Prime Minister's audience with Pope Benedict XVI (Feb 09)