Feature - Jesuits Vs Vatican banker over future of the world
For Professor Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, economist and banker, and president of the Vatican bank, the main cause of the economic crisis in the West is the collapse in the birth rate. Gotti Tedeschi has been maintaining this thesis for some time, with great vigour. And he argues for it frequently at conferences and in articles in L'Osservatore Romano.
Some, however, continue to think that what is blocking economic development is not a reduction, but an uncontrolled rise in the birth rate.
One of the most tenacious proponents of this neo-Malthusian thesis is a famous professor of political science who has taught in New York for years, Professor Giovanni Sartori, a prominent editorialist for the leading Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, from the columns of which he repeatedly attacks the Catholic Church as the champion of "insane demographic growth," a prelude to nothing but disaster.
The two theses are opposed, and entirely irreconcilable. In the view of Gotti Tedeschi, even using immigration to compensate for the drop in the birth rate is not enough to resolve the economic crisis in Western countries.
But not everyone entirely agrees with him on this point. Not only among demographers, but even at that "think tank" of the Holy See which is La Civiltà Cattolica, the magazine of the Rome Jesuits that, by statute, is reviewed by the Vatican secretariat of state before publication.
In the October 2 issue of La Civiltà Cattolica, the director of the authoritative magazine, GianPaolo Salvini (pictured), dedicated 11 pages to the presentation of a book by two demographers who demonstrate, statistics at hand, that the population in Italy is not at all on the decline.
But rather, it is experiencing a new "demographic revolution," in which heavy immigration, the increase in life expectancy, the revival of the birth rate, and the cohesion between parents and children are interacting in a positive way.
FULL STORY Fewer births and more immigrants (espressonline)
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