Pope Francis urged the Italian Revenue Agency by recalling the Church’s teaching on the universal destination of goods.
“Taxation, when it is just, is in service of the common good,” the pope said in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall 31 January.
“Let us work so that the culture of the common good may grow — this is important — so that we may take seriously the universal destination of goods, which is the first purpose of goods,” he continued, “the universal destination, which the Church’s social doctrine continues to teach even today, inheriting it from Scripture and the Fathers of the Church.”
According to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, a book compiling the Catholic Church’s teachings on social issues, “each person must have access to the level of well-being necessary for his full development. The right to the common use of goods is the ‘first principle of the whole ethical and social order’ and ‘the characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine.’”
“The principle of the universal destination of goods is an invitation to develop an economic vision inspired by moral values that permit people not to lose sight of the origin or purpose of these goods, so as to bring about a world of fairness and solidarity, in which the creation of wealth can take on a positive function,” the compendium says.
In his speech to a delegation from the Italian Revenue Agency, Pope Francis said it is important to work with honesty, impartiality, and transparency.