«Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills». With these words in in number 53 of the Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”, Pope Francis says “No to an exclusion economy” and “No to the new idolatry of money” that destroys the life and dignity of the human beings. «How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless».
 

«Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded—continues the Pope—. We have created a ‘throw away’ culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the ‘exploited’ but the outcast, the ‘”leftovers”».
 

«Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own» (n. 54 ).
 

«The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person!» (n. 55).
 

«The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule» (n. 56).
 

«Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor. I exhort you to generous solidarity, and to the return of economics and finance to an ethical approach that favors human beings» (n. 58).