Growing inequality not act of fate-pope (2)

(ANSA) - Vatican City, October 20 - Pope Francis warned against the "endemic and systematic increase in inequality and exploitation of the planet" during an audience at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on Friday.
    This, he said, "is greater than the rise in income and wealth".
    "Yet inequality and exploitation are not acts of fate and nor are they constant throughout history," Francis continued. "They depend … on the economic rules that a society decides to give itself," he said. When the logic of profit prevails, "democracy tends to become a plutocracy in which inequality and exploitation of the planet grow". "We need to free ourselves from the pressures of the public and private lobbies that defend sectoral interests and also to overcome forms of spiritual laziness," the pope went on. "Political action really needs to be in the service of people, the common good and respect for nature." In this respect, the market also needs to be "civilised".