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Editorials - Looking at the world from under the table
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 11/16/2025
World Day of the Poor, established in 2017 by Pope Francis, does not coincide with the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty established by the UN in 1992, which is celebrated on October 17. They are similar and have much in common, but there is a big difference between the two days, represented by the first beatitude of the Gospel: ‘Blessed are the poor’. That is why, when in 1987 Father Joseph Wresinski, founder of the ATD Fourth World Movement, launched the initiative that the UN would adopt five years later, he evangelically called it the ‘World Day for the Eradication of Poverty’. Poverty is not just misery, and the poor are not just misery. Many poor people are also in misery, but not all of them, and not all poverty and not all poor people should be eliminated, because if we eliminated all those who freely choose poverty, the earth would become truly too miserable.

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This year, Pope Leo chose as his title: “You are my hope, my Lord” (Psalm 71:5). If we are honest, we must admit that we find it very difficult to celebrate the day of the poor and their hope, which is not in vain, because almost all of us, sitting on the comfortable sofas of our warm homes, have lost touch with the truly poor. In order to talk about and then celebrate a day of the poor, we should first get to know the poor in the flesh, be friends with some of them, enter their homes, shacks or non-homes, and perhaps stay there for a while. We should listen to them, let them speak, and recognize them—as the friends of ATD Fourth World do—with dignity of thought and words. All reports, studies, statistics, books, conferences, actions, and policies on poverty are produced by non-poor people, by experts who almost always talk about a continent they have never been to and know only from hearsay. We should supplement these reports and studies, which are often (though not always) useful, with different reports and studies, those that come from people who are inside the poverty that is described by those outside it. ‘Reality is superior to the idea’, a phrase very dear to Pope Francis, always applies, but especially when dealing with misery and unchosen poverty, where too often the idea of poverty prevails over the reality of poverty.
On this day, we should finally give the floor to the truly poor, listen to their point of view on their poverty, and let them tell us in their own words which aspects of their poverty they would like to eliminate and which they would not. If we did so, we would see something very different. It would be, for example, something Christian and prophetic if, at least in view of this day, we set up a commission composed exclusively or predominantly of poor people to prepare the first draft of Pope Leo's message and the introduction to the Caritas Report. We would learn to look at our world by standing with Lazarus under the table of the rich man, because the perspective of the poor on the world is essential even for those who are not poor or are no longer poor. The poor must not remain only the object of studies, words, actions, and prayers; they can become the subjects: we will see other studies, other actions, other prayers.
Perhaps we do not do this because, even in the Church, the truly poor frighten us; they remind us of a dark part of our lives that we do not want to see, and so instead of truly encountering them, we prefer to talk about the poor and give them alms. If, on the other hand, we really knew today's Lazaruses and sat down next to them, from that low vantage point we would see things that messages and reports cannot see by imagining poverty and looking at phenomena, data, and traces of poverty without seeing the poor, or seeing them only occasionally or at certain moments—for example, when they ask for help. But the “poor” (if we really want to call them that, which only says something about these people) do not just ask for help, they do many other things, some of them beautiful: they fall in love, sometimes they help others, they still know how to bring children into the world, they endure (like Job) our words and glances at them, and they often still know how to celebrate.
The big problem with ‘aid’ to the poor has to do with the issue of competence. Those who deal with it, almost always in perfect good faith, almost never have the necessary expertise on poverty. Because the most important expertise, in all areas (including the market), is that which arises from so-called tacit knowledge, i.e., that dimension of uncodified knowledge that cannot be learned in school or in master's programs. Tacit knowledge-competence is in fact that which is found only in the minds and souls of people who find themselves in that specific situation, and which only they possess. It is the expertise to be able to live on two dollars a day, to prepare a meal with almost nothing, to truly know what a companion (cum-panis) is, what trust (fides: corda) is, what charity is (that which is dear, and therefore valuable), how not to freeze to death without radiators and stoves, and even to intuit something of what the most scandalous and prophetic phrase in the Bible means: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Luke 6:20).
We could also express all this with the term ‘subsidiarity’, a great principle at the heart of our democracy. Any help and any words about poverty must start from those who are inside the problem, from what they already know and are, from their savoir faire, and then act only as a second step. “Only you can do it, but you cannot do it alone,” Bishop Giancarlo Bregantini taught me many years ago, a perfect summary of this evangelical subsidiarity.
This day, then, should be the right day to get to know and appreciate more the truly poor, who need many things, we know, but who first need friendship and esteem, because it is the lack of esteem that is the real poverty of the poor, even within the Church that does so much for them. Especially today, when meritocratic religion is succeeding in convincing us that the poor are not only destitute but also guilty of their poverty. Happy Day of the Poor to everyone, but first and foremost to the poor.
 
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    [text] => 
Editorials - Looking at the world from under the table
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 11/16/2025
World Day of the Poor, established in 2017 by Pope Francis, does not coincide with the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty established by the UN in 1992, which is celebrated on October 17. They are similar and have much in common, but there is a big difference between the two days, represented by the first beatitude of the Gospel: ‘Blessed are the poor’. That is why, when in 1987 Father Joseph Wresinski, founder of the ATD Fourth World Movement, launched the initiative that the UN would adopt five years later, he evangelically called it the ‘World Day for the Eradication of Poverty’. Poverty is not just misery, and the poor are not just misery. Many poor people are also in misery, but not all of them, and not all poverty and not all poor people should be eliminated, because if we eliminated all those who freely choose poverty, the earth would become truly too miserable.

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    [title] => Let's teach children the logic of giving: Pinocchio is not the model to follow
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Financial education: with young children, even for household chores, money should be used as a reward and not as an incentive
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on October 3, 2025
"The Adventures of Pinocchio" is not only a classic of world literature, but also contains a great deal of economics. Classics never grow old, and neither has Pinocchio's economic ethic. In some passages, we find real lessons on the use of money for children and young people. From the beginning of his adventures, Pinocchio develops a terrible relationship with money, which is at the root of the unfortunate pages of his story. He ends up in Mangiafoco's theater selling his alphabet book, and then, for the five gold coins he is given, he ends up in the clutches of the cat and the fox and their economic abuse.

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Pinocchio's interpreters, including the few economists who have tried to study him, faced with Pinocchio's unpreparedness and naivety in handling money, have drawn the conclusion that seems most obvious to many: it is good for children to be educated from an early age about finance and the logic of money, otherwise when they grow up they will end up becoming victims of cats and foxes: “The story of Pinocchio offers food for thought about our money” (FEduF).
In reality, I am convinced that the message of Collodi's book is exactly the opposite, namely: keep your boys and girls away from money and its logic while you still can. Money and children live—or should live—in different worlds. Their mother tongue is gift-giving, and when they come into contact with money and economic logic, it must be done with infinite care because too often the power of economic language devours the delicate register of gift-giving—and that would be a real educational disaster.
When they need money, they ask their parents for it, and it is within this non-economic and gratuitous relationship that they also learn the basics of tomorrow's economy. Their economic dependence on their parents is excellent, because money known at the beginning as a gift creates the ethical conditions for assigning the right value to contracts and work tomorrow. There is now empirical evidence that children and pre-adolescents (in experiments conducted in controlled settings) engaged in activities governed by extrinsic incentives (monetary or otherwise) show a lower aptitude for performing activities with intrinsic rewards during their development (David Greene and Mark R. Lepper 1974).
The main issue at the heart of the use of money with minors is therefore the so-called motivational crowding-out (Frey 1997; Aknin, Van de Vonderwoort and Hamlin, 2018). The introduction of extrinsic motivation (money) to an activity in order to get a child to perform a given action gradually erodes the strength of the intrinsic motivation for that action in younger children, with the possible outcome of educating people who respond only to external incentives. If, for example, a family introduces an incentive system for their children's domestic activities (clearing the table: $3; dishes: 3; walking grandpa: 4; walking the dog: 2...), over time it will become very difficult to educate them in the ethics of virtue, according to which the table should be cleared for a reason internal to being a child and part of a family, grandpa should be accompanied because we love him and it is part of a grandchild's ‘duty’ to do so, the room should be kept tidy because it is good to do so, and so on. This does not mean never using money with young children; however, it should be used as a reward and not as an incentive, i.e., to reinforce good behavior and not as the “reason” for doing good—the reward reinforces virtue, it does not create it; the incentive creates the action, which would not happen without the incentive.
Incentives used with adults can serve their purpose if they are based on an intrinsic ethic that is capable of withstanding the manipulative impact of incentives – let us not forget that incentive derives from incentivus, the flute that tuned instruments, the magical charmer that takes us where we would not go spontaneously. If, on the other hand, the incentive is given to people who do not have a strong ethic of virtue, over time they will find themselves like donkeys that respond only to the stick and the carrot. It is freedom, and therefore the capacity for gratuitousness, that is at the heart of these tools and these arguments. Yesterday, it was easier for the incentive to be based on an intrinsic ethic of ‘a job well done’; today, it is much more difficult, especially if it is introduced too early at home or at school.
A similar, albeit different, argument applies to pocket money. Even in these cases, although pocket money is not the same as an incentive (they can coexist, or one can be activated without the other and vice versa), a contractual and economic framework is triggered. The pedagogy of pocket money also inevitably leads to the growth of the economic-financial register and leaves in the background that of gratuitousness and gift-giving, and of healthy dependence on parental mediation.
Today, young people are not developing a good relationship with the world of work, partly because economic logic enters the home too early, through the Trojan horse of responsibility. The dominant culture of the ‘empire’ is increasingly that of business, and as in every empire, its culture enters everywhere, almost always without our knowledge.
 
Photo credits: Photo by Splenetic Freeimages.com
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    [text] => 
Financial education: with young children, even for household chores, money should be used as a reward and not as an incentive
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on October 3, 2025
"The Adventures of Pinocchio" is not only a classic of world literature, but also contains a great deal of economics. Classics never grow old, and neither has Pinocchio's economic ethic. In some passages, we find real lessons on the use of money for children and young people. From the beginning of his adventures, Pinocchio develops a terrible relationship with money, which is at the root of the unfortunate pages of his story. He ends up in Mangiafoco's theater selling his alphabet book, and then, for the five gold coins he is given, he ends up in the clutches of the cat and the fox and their economic abuse.

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    [title] => Eugenio Borgna on the trail of joy: it is fleeting, but must be cherished
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The posthumous essay - The great psychiatrist offers texts taken from the classics on a reality that, unlike happiness, the market cannot sell us. Because it is consumed as it is generated
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 04/09/2025
Happiness is the new promise of the market economy. The day before yesterday it promised us bread, yesterday well-being, today happiness. It promises it to us in many ways, most recently with artificial intelligence, which, by finally doing better than us at everything we don't like and new things we don't yet do, will give us perfect happiness. A happiness that has to do with having, with comfort, with freedom of choice, with growth, with ‘more’, and often borders on fun and pleasure.

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What the market cannot sell us or give us is the Joy that Eugenio Borgna talks about in a beautiful essay (Einaudi, 144 pages, €13.00). It is not an academic essay, but resembles a notebook, a travel diary, a collection of scattered thoughts, united by the theme of joy. Joy is not happiness, because joy happens in the present, it is an experience, while happiness (or unhappiness) is a more stable condition. Nor is it gladness, even if Borgna does not tell us why, but we can guess by thinking of the perfect gladness of Francis, of the etymology of the word, which refers to manure (“laetus”).
Providence has placed joy among the essential resources for living. However, it has hidden it in small, tiny things, almost invisible if we rush too much. And perhaps for this reason, the poor and pure of heart are able to grasp it, perhaps only them. It is part of the landscape of that Kingdom of Heaven where all the poor and pure of heart dwell, sometimes without knowing it. Sometimes it comes after great pain, depression, and bereavement, and its arrival is the sentinel that announces the dawn. It is grace, only grace, all gift. We can buy some kinds of happiness, but not the joy of living. That is pure gratuity, and it is the most beautiful. Other times it comes during a different kind of prayer, accompanied by tears.
Let's say right away that it is not easy, even for a significant and excellent author such as Borgna (1930-2024), to write a book composed mainly of quotations from many of the greatest poets, writers, and philosophers of all time. Because it is difficult for anyone to alternate their own thoughts with the infinite thoughts of Rilke, Leopardi, Nietzsche, or Simone Weil. But perhaps Borgna's intention or animus was precisely to give us, at the end of his life (which once would have been considered long), the most beautiful words and texts on joy that he encountered in the course of his life and that of many others, especially in the practice of his profession as a psychiatrist. However, set among the words of the classics, some of Borgna's reflections on joy are also important and beautiful, touching on the beauty of his quotations, such as this one found at the beginning of the essay: “The time of hope is the future, as is that of waiting; the time of nostalgia and sadness is the past; the time of joy is the present, fragile and luminous.” Joy happens now, joy does not accumulate, we are no longer capable of joy tomorrow because we felt it today or yesterday; indeed, sometimes a long famine of joy prepares us for a sublime and unique joy. It is ‘consumed’ as it is generated. It is as ephemeral as a butterfly, but in that brief flight it releases all its infinite beauty. Again: “In joy, there are no longer the dimensions of the past and the future, worries and fears, nostalgia and anxieties; we live in the present, in the burning instant of a present that expands and restores meaning to life.”
But Borgna's most original and evocative pages are those related to his work, in particular his strong invitation to cherish the fragile joy in others (and in ourselves) also and because it is ephemeral and transitory: "Each of us has the task of tracing the traces of joy in the faces, eyes, gazes, and smiles of the people we meet, avoiding extinguishing it with our inattention and indifference. So when a few drops, a few sparks of joy are reborn in a patient, we cannot help but feel called to glimpse the dawn of hope." This is truly a beautiful passage. He adds: "As I come to the end of this book, I cannot help but say that when, in psychiatry, but also in medicine, we meet a person, young or old, immersed in joy, and in whom there are symptoms of illness, we should do everything we can not to hurt that joy by rigidly adhering to the slogan of telling the whole truth to the sick person. Joy is too precious a gift not to be held close to the heart and welcomed in its inner light and lightness, in its levity and fragility: in its silence and grace." These are words in which all his art and professional wisdom has blossomed into wisdom and poetry. From time to time, Borgna enters into dialogue with some Christian authors, from Teresa of Avila to Pope Francis (with whom he closes the book), as if to make us want to ask ourselves: but what is the typical mark of Christian joy? He does not answer, but invites us to seek it and perhaps find it in the joy of children, whom Jesus often points to in the Gospels as models of faith, and invites us to be like them in order to enter the Kingdom. There must therefore be something special about the joy of children in relation to that of the Gospel. It is truly all and only grace. Children experience life simply by living, no matter what they do. They rejoice even when they fall asleep anywhere—children's sleep is a heritage of humanity. Childhood is the age of perfect joy, because children have only the present, and in the present they encounter it. That is why contact with children is essential for everyone's joy.
Joy becomes more complicated as adults and then as old people, because we feel life slipping away and, in order not to lose it, we think we can stop it by capturing and devouring it—and joy does not come. Fun, aperitifs, restaurants, cruises, vacations pursued all year round. We eat up life, devour people and everything we encounter for a joy that does not come. But even in old age, joy is possible. However, it is very similar to the joy possible for Sisyphus who, having reached the top of yet another climb pushing his eternal boulder, in the brief pause between the end of the ascent and the beginning of the new descent, in that fleeting breath can experience a paradoxical but true joy: “We must imagine Sisyphus happy” (A. Camus). At other times, it is the boulder that generates an equally paradoxical joy, when life has taken away all the reasons for yesterday's joys and happiness and we go on only because life imposes its intrinsic discipline: preparing breakfast, going out for bread, carefully setting the table even if we are alone and there is no longer a companion. It is the boulder of life that drives us and, suddenly, can give us a delicate and true joy, which sneaks in between the dishes and the broom. I leave the last word to Borgna, thanking him: “We should never hurt the joy of a person who entrusts themselves to our care.”
Photo credits: Photo by Arina Krasnikova on Pexels 
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    [text] => 
The posthumous essay - The great psychiatrist offers texts taken from the classics on a reality that, unlike happiness, the market cannot sell us. Because it is consumed as it is generated
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 04/09/2025
Happiness is the new promise of the market economy. The day before yesterday it promised us bread, yesterday well-being, today happiness. It promises it to us in many ways, most recently with artificial intelligence, which, by finally doing better than us at everything we don't like and new things we don't yet do, will give us perfect happiness. A happiness that has to do with having, with comfort, with freedom of choice, with growth, with ‘more’, and often borders on fun and pleasure.

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    [title] => Mother Superior or “Leader”? The Convent Is Not a Business
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The use of consultants to reorganize religious life introduces criteria and models into communities that distance them from the primacy of charisma. With a dangerous metamorphosis.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on August 10, 2025
For many centuries, Christian charisms have offered ideas and categories to civil life. Monks, nuns, and friars have written municipal statutes, advised princes, merchants, and bankers, and invented universities and hospitals. In recent decades, the cultural and social creativity of charisms has greatly diminished. Partly due to its failure to engage with the modern spirit, Christian culture has entered a dark and silent night, where we ask the prophet: ‘Watchman, how much of the night remains?’ (Isaiah 21:11). In this long famine of thought and spirit, the representatives of the winning paradigm, business, are entering en masse into ecclesial communities, where they would like to teach how to govern, how to relate to one another, even spirituality. Businesses have borrowed spirituality from the world of religion, adapted it to corporate ends, distorting it (spirituality knows only intrinsic value); and the spirituality that is now returning to the religious world is one that has been ‘genetically modified’ by its passage through business. But we like it all the same, perhaps even more.

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A crucial area where the presence of business in religious communities is particularly strong is that of ‘leadership’, the first dogma of the new capitalist religion. There is, in fact, an elective affinity between the religious world and leadership. Religious life began in the past as a hierarchical society, with members divided into superiors and subjects. The world then changed, the hierarchical vision collapsed, creating a real vacuum that takes various forms. The first is ‘anarchy’, a ‘do-it-yourself’ community where everyone has their own interpretation of charisma. Others react with a nostalgic return to the hierarchy and ‘radicalism’ of the past, and the damage is perhaps even greater. Finally, more and more people are turning to consultants and leadership as a simple solution: just transform the superior into a leader to save both tradition and the modern spirit. If new adjectives are then added to the noun leadership, the conquest is complete: ethical, compassionate, inclusive, authentic, responsible, loving, Ignatian, Benedictine, Jesus-like, Franciscan, ‘servant’, ‘caring’, ‘graceful’ leadership, etc. Every day, we work on the adjectives without questioning the noun (leadership), where the flaw lies. But nothing conquers the soul of the religious world more than spiritual leadership, the new capitalist cult in mystical garb that is invading communities, movements, and synods, where it is welcomed with the same enthusiasm with which the Aztec king Montezuma welcomed Cortés.
Imagine Sister Antonia, prioress of a Benedictine monastery in crisis. The decisions of the chapter are met with increasing difficulty by the nuns. Subgroups are formed, conflicts creep in, individualism arises, murmurs are heard, and enthusiasm and joy decline. Sister Antonia is losing confidence and hope. She goes to read the old constitutions and finds language and words that seem distant to her. One day, a nun suggests turning to an agency specializing in governance and leadership, with expertise in consecrated life. The work begins, and after three weeks, the consultants identify the core of the problem: the prioress is still seen as a “superior,” and a transformation into a “spiritual leader” is needed, according to the following principles: (1) the spiritual leader does not need hierarchy, because inner consensus and the free adherence of followers arise from the “charisma of the leader”; (2) they must possess “higher levels of ethical values” (Oh & Wang, 2020); (3) Furthermore, “they must be attractive, credible, and seen as a moral model” (Brown, Trevino, and Harrison, 2005). Sr. Antonia is a little lost at first—she wonders, "Do I have all these qualities?‘ - but then the consultants convince her, showing her that spiritual leadership is more egalitarian and gentle than the founders’ rules. But is this really the case? Let's say right away that the real problem with these changes is not their failure but their success: often the metamorphosis succeeds, but instead of flying like a butterfly, one wakes up in Gregor Samsa's bed (Kafka).
The first misunderstanding about leadership lies in the word itself. Its philosophy is built on the distinction between those who lead (leaders) and those who are led (followers). No theory of leadership can question this dualism, even when it explicitly states that it wants to overcome it. Leadership is, in fact, in itself a hierarchical and positional concept—just think of the popular use of the word in sports: ‘race leader,’ 'leader corner'...
Then there is a second, decisive problem. Every theory of leadership necessarily implies an emphasis on the leader as an ethical and spiritual model for followers: the leader must become the reference point for his followers. And so something fundamental is forgotten: in monasteries and convents, the leader is not the abbot or the abbess, but the rule and the charisma. The abbot is the first follower. Woe betide the day when some monk in a monastery thinks he has to follow a leader, a person other than Christ, who reminds us forcefully: ‘Do not be called guides’ (Mt 23:10). The secret of the longevity of the charism of the monastic world lies in the absence of leaders, which distinguishes it from the movements and new charismatic communities of the 20th century. In these, in fact, the founder closely resembles the “charismatic leader” described by Max Weber, where everything and everyone depends on the person of the leader. The leadership of the founder is essential for the birth of these movements, but those that have managed to overcome the founding phase have had to move from personal leadership to a government detached from the characteristics of one or more individuals. The leadership of the founder is the great legacy of charismatic movements, but it is also their great vulnus. When, on the other hand, movements think they can overcome the post-founder crisis by treating the president as a leader, i.e., as the founder, they encounter fatal difficulties. The wisdom of communities after their founders lies above all in knowing how to transform governance into a post-leadership model, where it is possible to stay together not by conforming and following a new leader but on the basis of the charisma of each and every one. This is a truly radical change.
This brings us to a third issue. Leadership theories forget that the sisters in a community are not followers of the prioress, even if she is the most spiritual and ethical person in the universe: instead, they each follow the rule, the charisma, and the vocation (which is a way of following Christ), and each obeys the best part of herself. To imagine that communities can be designed as a dynamic of spiritual leaders and followers is to lose the profound meaning of charisma and community. When leadership experts arrive, they reproduce the dichotomous vision of leaders and followers, and without meaning to (it is their job), they lead the community in the wrong direction. Working for years with Paolo Santori on leadership, I have become convinced that it is increasingly harmful even for businesses, but it is truly devastating in religious life. Because while in companies you go home in the evening and everything is put into perspective, in communities you don't go out in the evening, and if those in charge are given a sacred anointing, the hierarchy becomes more totalizing and dangerous than the old one, where at least there were limits, boundaries, and counterweights to the abbot's authority.
What, then, could Sister Antonia and her community do? First of all, recognize the crisis, do not deny it, call it by name, and let its angels and demons come out. Then welcome it into your home and celebrate with your new guest. They should listen to the crisis thoroughly, letting it speak and shout, because it has precious things to say hidden beneath the shell of pain and fear. Then they should begin to listen to one another, without haste. They should pray the Psalms, Job, the Song of Songs, because centuries, millennia of daily contact with Scripture are an infinite heritage, including for governance and relationships during crises. Then Sr. Antonia will do her part, each will do hers, and all with equal dignity, honor, and respect. She will not feel herself to be the spiritual leader of her sisters, she will not present herself as a moral or spiritual model for others. She will be fragile and full of limitations like everyone else, but she will continue to believe in the spirit and charism—this is the Christian hope—and she will live her transitory task solely as a service. She will simply play her part in a collective ‘game’, her step in a communal ‘dance’. This is also because, if we really look at the Bible, the people chosen for the most important tasks - from David to Moses, from Esther to Peter - were the least suited to be spiritual models to follow: they were chosen because they were not up to the task—inadequacy is the ordinary condition of biblical kings and prophets, and aware of this, they pointed to the Law (the Torah) as their ‘leader’.
Sometimes a solution will come, always temporary. Other times, we will have to live with the non-solution, as we all do in families, institutions, and businesses. Because the business of living is a growing, gentle coexistence with limits, imperfection, and inadequacy. Until the end.
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    [text] => 
The use of consultants to reorganize religious life introduces criteria and models into communities that distance them from the primacy of charisma. With a dangerous metamorphosis.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on August 10, 2025
For many centuries, Christian charisms have offered ideas and categories to civil life. Monks, nuns, and friars have written municipal statutes, advised princes, merchants, and bankers, and invented universities and hospitals. In recent decades, the cultural and social creativity of charisms has greatly diminished. Partly due to its failure to engage with the modern spirit, Christian culture has entered a dark and silent night, where we ask the prophet: ‘Watchman, how much of the night remains?’ (Isaiah 21:11). In this long famine of thought and spirit, the representatives of the winning paradigm, business, are entering en masse into ecclesial communities, where they would like to teach how to govern, how to relate to one another, even spirituality. Businesses have borrowed spirituality from the world of religion, adapted it to corporate ends, distorting it (spirituality knows only intrinsic value); and the spirituality that is now returning to the religious world is one that has been ‘genetically modified’ by its passage through business. But we like it all the same, perhaps even more.

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Novecento - Two volumes bring attention back to the modernist priest and allow for the relaunch of the appeal for the revision of the excommunication, starting from the reading of the dogma as the result of historical evolution
by Luigino Bruni
published in Agorà Avvenire on 08/06/2025
«Has Christianity as a great social force already run its course? Has the drama of its civil fruition in the tradition of Mediterranean spirituality already reached its conclusion?” (Ernesto Buonaiuti, History of Christianity, I, Preface). These few sentences would suffice to give us a true idea of the quality and relevance of Ernesto Buonaiuti's thought, although the relevance of an author is only one dimension, and not even the most important one, for assessing his value.. 

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Buonaiuti wrote these words in the early 1940s. It was a time when churches were overflowing, Christianitas appeared to be at its peak, and everything gave the Catholic Church the distinct impression that it had a century of further conquests and successes ahead of it, in Italy, in Europe, and throughout the world (the missions). Yet, in that time of great Catholic hopes, Buonaiuti asked himself and the Church radical questions that even today's Catholics are unable to formulate with his same honesty and freedom of spirit.
That is why we cannot but welcome with joy and cultural and civic enthusiasm the publication of two impressive books on Ernesto Buonaiuti. The first, published by Gabrielli, is Ernesto Buonaiuti. Biografia e antologia (Ernesto Buonaiuti: Biography and Anthology), edited by Pietro Urciuoli (578 pages, US$40.00); the second, published by Marsilio, is Ernesto Buonaiuti. L'essenza del Cristianesimo (Ernesto Buonaiuti: The Essence of Christianity), edited by Enrico Cerasi (672 pages, US$55.00). Both consist of an extensive introduction and a much more voluminous anthological section with texts by Buonaiuti. In addition to reconstructing Buonaiuti's human and intellectual biography, the introductions also offer Urciuoli and Cerasi's interpretation of the figure and work of the Roman priest and professor. Different readings, different selections of texts, two extremely useful, well-edited books that are well worth reading. Cerasi's anthology consists of a few long texts from the first part of Buonaiuti's career (from Lettere di un prete modernista to Gioacchino da Fiore). This was no easy selection, given Buonaiuti's vast literary output. Urciuoli's book, on the other hand, takes a different approach: it contains over sixty passages, articles, or excerpts from books, in strict chronological order, from the first in 1901 to some posthumous texts from the late 1940s.
The Buonaiuti case, which has been with us for over a century now, is far from closed. Unfortunately, it is open like a wound, which therefore still hurts. A scholar, a priest, and a man of exceptional talent and absolute value, whose existence was turned upside down by his clash with the institutions of the Catholic Church of his time, a clash from which Don Ernesto emerged seriously wounded, amputated, but still capable of faith, hope, and agape, until the end, despite the Holy Office. As I have already written in these columns, the jubilee year – the time when debts were remitted and slaves were freed – could, should be the right time for Buonaiuti's rehabilitation and the lifting of his excommunication, or at least a post mortem transformation into a much less serious and defamatory disciplinary act. Buonaiuti's memory is still imprisoned by the condemnation of the Holy Office and cries out for liberation, which would be a true jubilee gesture of justice. And then extend it to the numerous ranks of modernist priests and laypeople whose lives, from Pius IX to Pius XII, were disrupted and ruined. Now would be the time to ask forgiveness for having used the Gospel, faith, theology, and doctrine as improper weapons to strike and mortally wound other Christians. Because this is a very serious matter, and it forces us to ask ourselves a real question: what is the good reason today for keeping the instrument of excommunication alive? It originated in distant times, when Christians killed each other over different interpretations of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. We cannot remain silent in the face of the remnants of a church of the three kingdoms, of the Holy Inquisition and the Holy Office, of the Syllabus and anathemas, of the gestatorial chair. Those popes of yesterday excommunicated kings and queens, politicians, and in 1949 all members of the Communist Party. And if a theologian recalled the communal and community nature of the Eucharist of the early Christians, he was expelled from the Christian community, excommunicated “expressly avoiding” (to be avoided by all), he could not enter any church, he was prevented from teaching at a state university (at La Sapienza, where Bonaiuti had become a full professor after winning a state competition), forced to sell the books in his library to live and support his elderly mother. This was the Church of the early 20th century, which, thanks to the Spirit that did not abandon it, has changed. It experienced a Council, prepared in part by Buonaiuti's suffering and death, and then it experienced different popes, up to Francis, up to Leo XIV.
After Vatican II, excommunication essentially disappeared along with Christianitas, the Church of the Counter-Reformation, the Church of power and prince-bishops, which bound and loosed in every place, in the external and internal forums. The Church today has been something else for a long time. It is a symbol and sacrament of another world, of a kingdom of mercy, where people come before their ideas—this is the true meaning of the principle “reality is superior to ideas”—reminding us that no concrete person should come after their ideas. We have learned this with great difficulty, and we must never forget it. We all know that the Church moves slowly. But at certain moments, the passage of time is different, it accelerates, and we can no longer wait, lest we be left behind by the good breath (ruah) of history.
There is, then, another decisive element. Today, in light of biblical and historical studies, no one would condemn as heretical Buonaiuti's theses on Paul and the Eucharist, which were at the center of the charges brought by the Holy Office and Civiltà Cattolica. Buonaiuti had already expressed his historical ideas on the Eucharist in a book he wrote in his youth, Lettere di un prete modernista (Letters of a Modernist Priest), published in 1908: "Historically, the sacraments are the progressive solidification of the concept of grace applied to the main contingencies of life. The Eucharist, for example—and I mention it because its evolution is more visible—took the place of the banquet in which the early Christians symbolized the brotherhood that awaited them in the kingdom. Over time, the doctrine of the real presence was formed, and later that of transubstantiation. Through this transformation, the primitive ethical value of the rite was lost. We want to revive it.“ Buonaiuti repeated this thesis in several subsequent articles, particularly in his article ”The Fundamental Experiences of St. Paul" for the magazine Religio (1920), which cost him his definitive excommunication. There he wrote: “The Eucharistic rite, in the conception and practice of the apostle, was the supernatural sanction of harmony and brotherhood in the supportive life of the community.” From a historical point of view, it is undeniable that the doctrine of the “real presence” of Jesus in the Eucharist and of transubstantiation were developed after the time of the early Christians. Buonaiuti affirmed a true primitive dimension of the Eucharistic tradition, without denying the subsequent development of the doctrine on the Eucharist.
More generally, Buonaiuti was interested in rediscovering the “Essence of Christianity,” as the title of two of his lectures in 1921, also in that decisive year, states. For the Roman professor, this essence lies in the following: “The whole Gospel is contained in this word with which Christ's messianic preaching begins: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.’” And again: "Christianity is essentially a reversal and overturning of the values that are most appreciated in normal human life. The whole Gospel, from the first word to the last, is based on the hope of the Kingdom. The basileia, the Kingdom of God, is the most familiar motif in Jesus' preaching.“ And then he asked rhetorically: ”Has the essence of Christianity been preserved through the centuries, or have we definitively strayed from the Christian message? Have we perhaps overturned the overturning, and returned to the state prior to the Christian overturning?"
Strengthened by this certainty about the essence, Buonaiuti then criticized those who wanted to make asceticism the center or a pillar of that different Kingdom: “Christianity is not ascetic in the Hellenistic sense of the word... In Christianity there is no pedagogy, no training, no exercise, because complete renunciation takes place suddenly, in an instant, through metanoia, through the sudden passage into a sphere of higher experiences, in which it is almost impossible to feel the backlash of material life.” It is not difficult to imagine that those who interpreted monasticism and consecrated life in the Counter-Reformation as asceticism and “purgative ways” did not find his vision palatable.
I will conclude by quoting one of his most beautiful passages. We find it at the end of his monumental treatise on the History of Christianity, published in 1943, three years before his death, which has the flavor, solemnity, and power of a spiritual testament: "We invoke you, first of all, O Father. We are all beggars, without distinction. We therefore return to you. Hasten your triumph, for our life has been consumed in the desire for your justice. We know that you were waiting for us to return: the return of beggars. Gather us into the peace of your forgiveness and your grace, and may our eyes never forget the eternal law of your Gospel, which is all in the sign of the cross, projected onto all the boundless suffering and all the thirsty hope of the universe: o crux, ave spes unica!"
 
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Novecento - Two volumes bring attention back to the modernist priest and allow for the relaunch of the appeal for the revision of the excommunication, starting from the reading of the dogma as the result of historical evolution
by Luigino Bruni
published in Agorà Avvenire on 08/06/2025
«Has Christianity as a great social force already run its course? Has the drama of its civil fruition in the tradition of Mediterranean spirituality already reached its conclusion?” (Ernesto Buonaiuti, History of Christianity, I, Preface). These few sentences would suffice to give us a true idea of the quality and relevance of Ernesto Buonaiuti's thought, although the relevance of an author is only one dimension, and not even the most important one, for assessing his value.. 

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    [title] => Let's rediscover the Frumentari Mountains the origin of the solidarity economy
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The proposal - A collective project on the first microcredit realities, born in the 15th century through the initiative of the Franciscans
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 11/01/2024
The idea of a widespread search in parish, diocesan, religious order and confraternity archives is born, to create from below a map of these forgotten institutions
The year 2025 is an important year for the Italian solidarity and civic economy. It is six hundred years since the birth of Blessed Mark of Montegallo, a tireless Franciscan and founder of Monti di Pietà, and three hundred and fifty since that of Scipione Maffei of Verona, who in his Dell'impiego del denaro (1744) demonstrated the ethical and Christian legitimacy of lending at (modest) interest. In full preparation for these “financial” anniversaries, I arrived at Christmas in my hometown-now Roccafluvione (AP), Marsia before the unification of Italy. And I did some research in the parish archives, moved by the hope of finding an ancient presence of a Monte frumentario, although no old man in the village remembers any in the area. No trace on the web or in books. So I was not expecting anything. Instead, I found a real mine.

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Not only did my parish have a Monte frumentario of which no less than two registers have been preserved, but with the help of a young colleague, Antonio Ferretti, and some parish priests, I tracked down other registers of Monti frumentari in two very nearby parishes: Capodipiano (Monte di S. Orso) and Roccacasaregnano. And then, thanks to historian Giuseppe Gagliardi, I learned of a record of a pastoral visit by Bishop Zelli in 1833-1837, where at least 70 Monti frumentari are listed in the diocese of Ascoli Piceno alone, of which as many as eight are in the mountain parishes of my municipality. A much more capillary and extensive presence, then, than we previously thought, a true microcredit network that lasted for centuries. We have already talked about the Frumentari Mountains in Avvenire. With deputy director Marco Ferrando and Federcasse (Bcc) we have also produced a podcast series “La terra del noi”. These Mounts were founded by the Franciscans in the late 15th century, later spread by the Capuchins and revived in the 18th century by the pastoral action of Pope Orsini (Benedict XIII). The Franciscans had first founded “pawnshops” in the cities of central and northern Italy, Christian variants of the Jewish and earlier Roman pawnshops. But in the countryside and in the South, where currency was scarce and therefore often usurious, those same Franciscans had the ingenious idea of starting “grain mounds,” small banks where grain was lent in the fall for seed and repaid after the harvest - taken “a satin” and repaid “a ridge”: the difference was the interest. The idea was as simple as it was wonderful: if the currency is not there or is too expensive, one can try to turn grain into currency (“grana”). They skipped a financial passage and created a great civil and Christian passage on which many climbed and were saved. The Frumentari Mountains are important because they are a perfect icon of the vocation of our now forgotten economy. While, in fact, the Protestant world separated market from gift - business is business and gift is gift - and thus invented philanthropic capitalism, the Catholic world mixed market and gift, gratuitousness and contracts, solidarity and interest. The Mount, in fact, did not give grain: it lent it (at interest); but that loan had the same substance and fragrance as agape, because it allowed those who had no seed to sow and then have bread. And so they explained what credit means: belief, trust, fides, life, and that communities do not live without credit, without believing in one another.
All this also emerges from the two old registers of the Mount that we found, dusty, forgotten and beautiful in the small, cold parish archives in Marsia, where they had been lying since the 1930s when they were found and rescued by then-parish priest Giuseppe Ciabattoni. The first, oldest, bears “year 1768” written on its cover; the other is for the years 1826 and following. One sheet, dated Nov. 17, 1764, reads thus, “ The grain of the Monte Frumentario of the Holy Relics of this Provostal Church of St. Stephen was dispensed to all those marked in the present book in the order that follows from the Mayors Domenico Martini and Giovanni Ruzzi da Casacagnano to be collected in the month of August of the future year 1765 by the new mayors Pietro Martini and Antonio Cesarini.” The Mount was called “frumentario” as early as the 1700s, was managed by a Confraternity (of the Holy Relics), and administered, according to an ancient Church tradition, by two mayors (“sindici”), who held office for only one year. From the book we note, in fact, that the mayors who distributed the grain in November were not the ones who administered the returns in the following summer-ancient institutional wisdom! In the sheet for the year 1765 thus, in fact, we read, “ The grain noted in the present book was not exact [past participle of exact] because of the very scarce harvest that occurred in the year 1765 in which it had to be exacted from the Mayors Pietro Martini da Marscia [dialectal name of Marsia] and Antonio Cesarini da Casacagnano.Signed F. Fratini, Provost. There, October 3, 1765.” There was no profiteering on misfortune, no making the poor despair - this is also root.
Then follow the accounting records, numbered in ascending order by date (1,2,3...). The coins were the paoli, baiocchi and scudi. The unit of volume was the quarta, but also the rubbio and the prebenda - in the mid-nineteenth century in several towns in the Ascoli region the rubbio was divided into 8 quarts, the quarta into 4 prebenda. Interesting, then, to note that the balance of the debt could be in grain, but also in coinage or days of labor. In fact we read in the second book, dated April 10, 1826: “ Giovanni, son of Vincenza da Gualdo, since he had quarta una of gold wheat at the price of paoli ten and a half, on account he worked one day, then a second day, and more discounted days six, and more days two, and more days four, and more residue of a prebend of Turkish wheat paoli two, and more had quarta una of wheat at the price of paoli fifteen” . So that of Marsyas was a hybrid Mount: a bit frumentary (grain with wheat), a bit pecuniary (payments of the grain in coin) and also labor-this is also Article 1 of the Constitution. The scripture was then crossed out by the mayors for payment. The records of the Mount of Marsyas, and those of neighboring parishes, all stop in the late 1850s, on the eve of the arrival of the Piedmontese when these church institutions were suppressed - a chapter all to be explored.
Out of this beautiful experience of mine came a proposal, addressed primarily to you readers of Avvenire: To give life to a widespread research on the Monti frumentari, in an exercise of collective intelligence. Let us search parish, diocesan, confraternity and religious order archives for a bottom-up mapping of these forgotten institutions. Let us create a “patrimonial community,” which reappropriates a piece of its own cultural capital. You don't need to be a specialist or a historian; anyone who lives in mountain and country towns, especially in the Center, South and Islands (but almost all regions had Mountains) can do their part. Let's look for traces of the Frumentari Mountains, but also of the “Monti delle doti” (or Virgin Mountains), of chestnuts, of wool, and who knows how many others. Don Giuseppe de Luca, in the 1950s had the great intuition of an “Italian Archive for the History of Piety.” There is also a history of economic and financial piety waiting to be discovered, known, valued. The roots are not past: they are present and future. And what is the “grain” of today, the seed to be guarded and shared for living? The year 2025 is a jubilee year: biblical jubilees were also and above all matters of the poor, of debts and credits. You can write your findings, big and small, to my address: l.bruni@lumsa.it. We will present the first results at some conferences, starting March 19, in Ascoli, for the anniversary of Blessed Mark of Montegallo, and from time to time we will say on these pages. Happy Jubilee and good research to all and sundry.

An initiative with “Avvenire” 600 years after the birth of Blessed Marco da Montegallo, the friar who started the experiment that gave rise to the loan of grain at modest interest rates for farmers in difficulty, and 350 years after that of Scipione Maffei, who demonstrated the Christian legitimacy of the mixture of solidarity and market
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The proposal - A collective project on the first microcredit realities, born in the 15th century through the initiative of the Franciscans
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 11/01/2024
The idea of a widespread search in parish, diocesan, religious order and confraternity archives is born, to create from below a map of these forgotten institutions
The year 2025 is an important year for the Italian solidarity and civic economy. It is six hundred years since the birth of Blessed Mark of Montegallo, a tireless Franciscan and founder of Monti di Pietà, and three hundred and fifty since that of Scipione Maffei of Verona, who in his Dell'impiego del denaro (1744) demonstrated the ethical and Christian legitimacy of lending at (modest) interest. In full preparation for these “financial” anniversaries, I arrived at Christmas in my hometown-now Roccafluvione (AP), Marsia before the unification of Italy. And I did some research in the parish archives, moved by the hope of finding an ancient presence of a Monte frumentario, although no old man in the village remembers any in the area. No trace on the web or in books. So I was not expecting anything. Instead, I found a real mine.

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Editorials - The Jubilee and the remission of debt
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 09/06/2024
This article went to press in a shortened version – here we are publishing it in full.
In Christian Europe, debt has been fought and discouraged for a very long time. That criticism is related to the great theme of interest on money, condemned in both the Old and New Testament. In more than a thousand years, between the 4th and 14th centuries, there were about seventy Councils with declarations against usury (i.e. interest greater than zero), which continued until the eve of the industrial revolution (1745). Capitalism then stopped criticising usury and made it its prime motor. The Church has continued to view debt and interest with suspicion, even if her voice is not always loud enough to be heard.

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The roots of this fight against usury are many and going deep. The central one is a problem of power asymmetry and therefore a phenomenon of passive income: someone who is stronger possesses a scarce and often essential resource that others live on (money) and therefore has the incentive to use that power asymmetry to his or her own advantage and therefore against those who are weaker. Those who lend do not have the same moral and economic responsibility as those who borrow: those who lend have more power, more freedom than those who get indebted, because of the radical difference between the starting position of creditors and debtors. This is why the condemnation was directed at those who lend at interest, much less at those who get into debt – this is also why the prodigal Basssanio in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice shouldn’t be less guilty than the usurer Shylock.
Pope Francis recently revived the strong call for the remission of the foreign debt of the poorest countries that was made by Pope John Paul II on the eve of the Great Jubilee of 2000: ‘I would like to echo this prophetic appeal, which is more urgent now than ever, bearing in mind that ecological debt and external debt are two sides of the same coin that mortgages the future’ (5 June 2024).
In the Bible, the jubilee was also and above all a social and economic affair. It recurred every 49 years, and was based on the wonderful institution of the shabbat (‘Saturday’) and the sabbatical year: ‘You must count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years’ (Leviticus 25:8) The jubilee was about the people's relationship with their God, but in biblical humanism, faith in God is immediately ethical, religion immediately becomes society and economy, hence debt, land, property, justice: ‘In this Year of Jubilee you must each return to your property.’ (Leviticus 25:12). And slaves were freed (Isaiah 61:1-3a), a liberation of those who had become slaves for their unpaid debts. No wonder, then, that the cancellation of debts was the jubilee act par excellence.
That different seventh day, that special seventh year, that greatly different jubilee are the vocation and calling of all the days of all the normal years. Giving animals and the land a rest, not working, freeing slaves and giving back land, even though they only happen on a single day, in a single year, have infinite value. Even if on many days and in many years we are under the ordinary iron laws of markets and force, even if on almost every day of almost every year we are not capable of equality, freedom and cosmic fraternity, that ‘almost’ enshrined in the Bible tells us something decisive: we are not condemned forever to the laws of the strongest and the richest, because if we are capable of imagining and proclaiming a ‘different day of the Lord’ (Isaiah 61:1), then that promised land can become our land. The shabbat is not the exception to a rule, it is its fulfilment; the Jubilee is not the special year, it is the future of time: it is the shabbat of shabbats. That ‘almost’, that difference between all and many days, is the door through which the Messiah can arrive (or return) at any moment, it is the window from which to look and see the new heavens and the new earth.
So there is no more opportune jubilee request than that of John Paul II and Francis, there is no time (kairos) more propitious than today to make it. Knowing well that it is almost certain – another ‘almost’ – that no one will take it up; but knowing even more that the ethical temperature of human civilisation rises for prophetic questions even when no one answers them. The Jubilee is not a utopia: it is prophecy. Utopia is a non-place; prophecy, on the other hand, is an ‘already’ that indicates a ‘not-yet’, it is a dawning of a day that is yet to come and has already begun. It is Eschaton anticipated, a journey to the end of the night, a dance to the end of love.
The prophetic questions of the “not-yet” were the ones that changed the world; because these questions become stakes driven into the rock of the mountain of human rights and freedoms and of the poor. And tomorrow someone else will be able to use yesterday's question to hoist themselves up and continue the climb to a higher heaven of justice. When we wrote, ‘Italy is a democratic republic founded on work’, Italy was still neither truly democratic nor yet founded on work, because the privileges of non-workers were great and too many. Yet as we were writing this, the era of Article 1 was beginning. When we read in the courts that Justice is equal for all, we know that we are looking at the promised land of the “not-yet”, but looking into its eyes we see it getting closer every day.
For that prophetic question to become a strong spire, however, it is important to imagine, think up different financial institutions and then bring them about, on a local and international level. The great and the powerful of the earth will never take up that different ‘new international financial architecture’ for the benefit of the poor and the weak, because, quite simply, those institutions are conceived, desired and managed by the great and the strong.
However, the history of the Church tells us that it is possible. While popes and bishops were writing bulls and documents against usury, bishops and charismas were creating anti-usury financial institutions, whose examples from Italy range from Monti di Pietà to Monti Frumentari, from Casse Rurali (rural savings banks – the tr.) to Banche Cooperative (Cooperative Banks – the tr.). They did not limit themselves to criticising bad institutions, nor to expecting them from the powerful: they did different works. Co-operators, trade unionists, citizens made sure that the words of the documents were accompanied with other, embodied words that were made of banks, cooperatives, anti-usury institutions.
Finally, the usury of our time is not just a financial matter, it is not just about banks, or the old and new usurers. We are inside a whole culture of usury, which does not listen to the first principle of every anti-usury civilisation: 'you cannot draw profit from the future, because that is the time of the children, the land and the descendants'. Our generation is a usurer generation, because a usurer is anyone who speculates on the time of the sons and daughters. The ‘ecological debt’ Pope Francis speaks about is usurer debt. We are behaving like Mazzarò, the main character of Verga's La roba. After accumulating stuff all his life, one day Mazzarò realises that he will have to die and cannot take his beloved things with him. First, in despair, he hits a boy with a stick, ‘out of envy’; then ‘he rushed out into the courtyard like a madman, staggering, and went round killing his own ducks and turkeys, hitting them with his stick and screaming: »You’re my own property, you come along with me!« We have built a civilisation based on possessions, and all that possessed stuff has created its institutions to increase stuff endlessly. The culture of possessions knows no gift, much less the remission of debt – it knows only amnesties, which are the anti-gift for the poor.
But let us leave the last word to the Bible, let us be consoled by the beauty of those ancient notes of hope and agape, to try to dream of its land of the “not-yet”: ‘If your brother who dwells near you becomes poor and sells himself to you... He shall serve you until the Year of Jubilee. And then he shall depart from you, both he and his children with him, and he shall return to his own family and to the possession of his fathers.’ (Leviticus 25:39-41).
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Editorials - The Jubilee and the remission of debt
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 09/06/2024
This article went to press in a shortened version – here we are publishing it in full.
In Christian Europe, debt has been fought and discouraged for a very long time. That criticism is related to the great theme of interest on money, condemned in both the Old and New Testament. In more than a thousand years, between the 4th and 14th centuries, there were about seventy Councils with declarations against usury (i.e. interest greater than zero), which continued until the eve of the industrial revolution (1745). Capitalism then stopped criticising usury and made it its prime motor. The Church has continued to view debt and interest with suspicion, even if her voice is not always loud enough to be heard.

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