Secretary General addresses a conference on training for business leaders in Houston
The human person at the center
The Synod is “an experience of listening and dialogue among different perspectives and attitudes”. The Synod was talked about in Houston too, during an address by the Secretary General of the Governorate of Vatican City State, to a conference aimed at business leaders, promoted by the Lumen Institute, held on Saturday morning, 26 October.
The Secretary General spoke about a time of rapid changes that “is also being experienced within the Vatican, when seeking new ways to reach people who come from very different contexts and training backgrounds”.
With the theme, “Mission to change culture”, the Conference addressed the call to evangelization in order to create “a culture of hope”, when encountering people who are “discouraged, pessimistic and cynical about the future, as if nothing could make them happy”. This is also the message of the approaching Jubilee. To be missionaries, Sr. Petrini highlighted, means to be “witnesses of hope” in any context or situation in which the disciples of Jesus may be. In the name of the one vocation to proclaim the Gospel, she called on participants to begin from those who are closest to us, such as families, friends, acquaintances, and above all, collaborators in the workplace, where managers and those in charge spend a large part of their days.
Sr. Petrini told participants that business leaders have a very important calling to fulfill, and referred to the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, in which Pope Francis described this calling as “a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world”. She noted that managers know that the most important resource is human capital, which is not only fundamental but also a priority that requires the implementation of effective administrative and commercial strategies that ”bring the human to the center of the organization”.
Sr. Petrini highlighted that seeking only mere profit and organizational efficiency, traditionally “favors a rigid separation between private and professional life”, and that this kind of business culture “is removed from concepts that are closer to a culture focused on the person that values self-giving, fraternity, generosity and solidarity”. The result is an ideology which in some ways, is sterile in terms of relationships, and apparently devoid of any other values.
Christian business leaders, the Secretary General added, make an effort to put humanity at the forefront, in order to promote a concept of work as a “vocation”. In fact, leaders do not need their employees simply to provide activities, expertise and professional abilities, but also their enthusiasm, creativity and heart. Good management, she stressed, requires leaders to be alongside their collaborators in order to build relationships based on mutual trust.
Sr. Petrini noted that in contemporary organizations, even ecclesial ones, there is the need for humanistic managers who are not only attentive to professional tools, techniques and results, but also ones who are capable of accompanying people.
