World financial crisis is a consequence of idolatry of money, Peruvian cardinal says

Lima, Peru, Sep 23, 2008 / 10:30 am

The Archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, said this week the financial crisis in the United States and the rest of the world is a consequence of the idolatry of money and power.

This idolatry has manifested itself in the network of corrupt officials who were greedy for more and therefore did not properly carry out their roles, Cardinal Cipriani said.

“They adore money and therefore, they engage in deceit. They issued a series of mortgages that had no value, and that, multiplied by millions has led to this flood of fraudulent corruption,” the cardinal said on his weekly radio program.

The cardinal warned that idolizing power and money has reached “very troubling levels in the world.”  When money and power are “the only objects of our lives, they end in problems,” he said.

“When there is so much desire for money, it is for power, and when there is a desire for power it is for money.  All of this just to impose our subjectivism, arrogance and pride,” the cardinal stated.

In this sense, he pointed out that the financial crisis in the Unites States is not because of “bad loans” but because of corruption by “those who were supposed to oversee mortgages, those who were supposed to handle lending, those who were supposed to be in charge of financial oversight” and who were part of a great “network of corruption.”