John Paul II has appointed French economist Michel Camdessus to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (Vatican City).

John Paul II has appointed French economist Michel Camdessus to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Untilrecently Camdessus was general director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This Pontifical Council, established by Paul VI in 1967, is presided over by Vietnamese Archbishop Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan. Its purpose is to promote justice and peace in keeping with the Gospel and the Church's social teaching, paying special attention to the realm of labor, the development of peoples, and the safeguarding of human rights.

Camdessus, who in early July was appointed president of the Catholic Social Weeks in France, is an assiduous student of Teilhard de Chardin and Emmanuel Mounier. When heading the IMF, he was the object of criticisms from several fronts. U.S. leaders never really trusted this 67-year-old Frenchman, a former director of the Bank of France (1984-1987), whom they considered a typical European "socialist." Other groups, especially NGOs, regarded the IMF under his leadership as the perfect embodiment of economic liberalism.

In response to such accusations, Michel Camdessus states that "globalization must be humanized." He has committed himself specifically to struggle for the reduction of developing countries' foreign debt. For many years, he has been very taken by John Paul II's idea to "globalize with solidarity." However, Camdessus said that "canceling the thousands of millions of dollars that the debt of these countries entails is ridiculous if they are not allowed to sell the fruit of their labour to the industrialized countries." (Zenit, Aug. 7/2000)