VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The controversial member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Mariana Mazzucato, told the academy yesterday that society’s “common good” must be based on the United Nations’ pro-abortion Sustainable Development Goals and that Christianity’s teaching contributed to “climate change.”
Mazzucato’s striking statements came during her February 12 presentation at the annual assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), of which she has been an ordinary member since 2022. Delivering a short talk on the “common good,” Mazzucato presented a view of the common good as being entirely divorced from any principles of religion, or the supernatural end of man, while also attacking the teaching of Christianity in terms of a perceived impact on the climate.
‘Common good’ defined by the UN’s development goals
Asked about how society should agree on what the common good is, in order to build the new “framework” which Mazzucato was proposing, she pointed to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the foundation.
“Begin with the SDG’s,” she stated. The “principle of subsidiarity is key,” she added, before continuing. “The first answer to the question is the SDG’s, and we should take them as seriously as war,” when money is made or found, she said.
By employing themes and words drawn from Catholic social teaching, such as the “common good” and “subsidiarity,” Mazzucato re-oriented these concepts into a new manner, based entirely on an irreligious grounding and the principles of morality set by the U.N.
The U.N. SDGs – comprising 17 goals and 169 targets – are linked with Agenda 2030 and are fundamentally pro-contraception and pro-abortion. Goal #5.6 is the goal to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls,” and includes the following aim: “Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,” a phraseology commonly used to refer to abortion and contraception.
READ: Vatican reaffirms commitment to Paris Climate Agreement despite inclusion of pro-abortion agenda
Such support for the SDG’s is not surprising. Mazzucato is pro-abortion and additionally was part of the U.N. Committee for Development Policy from 2019 through 2021. Her alignment with such globalist entities is part of her normal operations, being a regular contributor to the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Furthermore, Mazzucato is not alone in the Vatican in citing the SDG’s as a foundation of a new global structure. In recent years Pope Francis has repeatedly promoted the SDG’s, even calling upon global religions to orient their work to the furthering of the SDG’s.
Francis has also launched his own initiative with the U.N. and with globalist corporations in order to promote a new “economic system” of capitalism and ensure the achievement of the SDG’s. Indeed, his speeches and writings on economics have drawn from Mazzucato’s own works.
Among other aspects, the Pope’s partnerships promote “sustainable lifestyles,” “gender equality,” and “global citizenship,” while the SDGs themselves promote “sexual and reproductive health services.” The new “Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican” is fundamentally committed to promote “environmental, social, and governance measures” in order to “achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”
Such deepening ties with globalist corporations and leaders lends further credence to beliefs that Pope Francis is aligned with the call for a “Great Reset.” He has referenced a “supranational common good,” and said that “there is need for a special legally constituted authority capable of facilitating its implementation.”
Christianity contributes to climate change?
The final question from the PAV assembly following Mazzucato’s talk was as surprising a line of questioning as its answer was striking. “Did Christianity contribute to climate change by preaching our superiority to animals?” she was asked.
Mazzucato answered: “I don’t think it’s just Christianity, I think globally we just messed up about putting that common good at the center,” she said.
READ: Why the Catholic Church should be opposing the Paris climate agreement
The self-described atheist cited a recent workshop she participated in, alongside leading international politicians, in which they examined “what would it look like if not only people were at the U.N. general assembly, but also rivers, forests, plants, animals.”
Having already noted that “all crises are interconnected,” Mazzucato re-issued her calls for an international “different framework” based on her description of the common good as born from the SDG’s, which she described as essential if society wished to “do better.”
St. Thomas on the common good
While modern Catholic texts on the common good have tended to portray the common good as akin to an irreligious form of social justice – even as presented in the modern catechism – the Church’s tradition presents a differing teaching.
Writing in De Regno, St. Thomas Aquinas notes that the common good of society cannot be divorced from, or outrightly reject, the supernatural aspect of life:
It is, however, clear that the end of a multitude gathered together is to live virtuously. For men form a group for the purpose of living well together, a thing which the individual man living alone could not attain. Now, the good life is a virtuous life; therefore, virtuous life is the end for which men gather together… Yet through virtuous living man is further ordained to a higher end, which consists in the enjoyment of God, as we have said above. Consequently, since society must have the same end as the individual man, it is not the ultimate end of an assembled multitude to live virtuously, but through virtuous living to attain to the possession of God.
Both at the Vatican press conference and in her own speech for the PAV, Mazzucato’s words appeared to echo those of Pope Francis, the Pope who – as she stated more than once yesterday – serves as an inspiration for her. In turn, Francis’ words closely follow the sentiments expressed by key globalist and founder of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, whose proposed anti-Catholic “Great Reset” is underpinned by a focus on a “green” financial agenda, as he mentions the “withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies,” and a new financial system based on “investments” which advance “equality and sustainability,” and the building of a “‘green’ urban infrastructure.”
READ: Vatican official at Davos says the Church is implementing the World Economic Forum agenda
Francis has signaled his intimacy with Schwab by sending an address to the WEF now five times in his 10-year pontificate, and allowing an annual Vatican roundtable at the Davos-based annual WEF conference.