Conclusion: A Summary

The Participants to the Centesimus Annus Pro-Pontifice Foundations gathered for a a Seminar on Finance and the Common Good, engaging a dialogue between theological reflection and financial practice, in order to foster social concern.To be at the service of the human person, economic activity requires both an ethical and legal framework. In particular, the market can only work within an ethical framework of trust. That ethical framework needs to be concretized in juridical norms which guarantee fair-play, competition and transparency. The legal framework must also ensure that economic freedom is situated within a wider system of fundamental human values, and that certain “collective goods” (CA, #40) – including the rights of workers - are protected, and that or certain fundamental human needs which “find no place on the market” (#34) do not remain unsatisfied.