Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it requires decisions, programs, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality. I am far from proposing an irresponsible populism, but the economy can no longer turn to remedies that are a new poison, such as attempting to increase profits by reducing the work force and thereby adding to the ranks of the excluded." (Pope Francis, the Joy of the Gospel [Evangelii Gaudium], no. 204)

I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world's economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity: "Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life." (Pope Benedict XVI, Charity  in Truth [Caritas in Veritate], no. 25, quoting Second Vatican Council, The Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et Spes], no. 63)

The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, or inherently inhuman or opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner. (Pope Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth [Caritas in Veritate], no. 36)

In many cases, poverty results from a violation  of the dignity of human work, either because work opportunities are limited  (through unemployment or underemployment), or "because a low value is put on  work and the rights that flow from it, especially the right to a just wage and  to the personal security of the worker and his or her family."  (Pope Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth [Caritas in Veritate], no. 63)

The obligation to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow also presumes the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can that society attain social peace. (St. John Paul II, The Hundredth Year [Centesimus Annus], no. 43)To be continued