A week ago today the annual convention of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation was held in Rome. This foundation was set up in 1993 by Pope John Paul II as a vehicle for the promotion, diffusion and implementation of the social teaching of the Catholic Church, with the involvement of business people, academics and professionals.

This is the third year that the Malta Chapter took part in this convention. This year there were seven Maltese participants led by my business partner Joseph FX Zahra and spiritual adviser Fr Joe Galea Curmi.

This year's convention had as its theme Development, Progress and Common Good.

This week's contribution and next week's contribution are not meant to be a report of who said what, but rather an assessment of the various aspects of this theme that emerged from the convention. One needs to put these thoughts against the background of the current international scenario, where we have many unanswered questions.

There is a great deal of uncertainty among the world's leading economies as they are still searching for the appropriate technical and legal solutions to come out of the current crisis.

In fact, there are still disagreements as to what economic policies to implement. There is uncertainty among the more vulnerable segments of society who have been mostly affected by the economic crisis, including the hungry and the unemployed.

There is also uncertainty among investors - those willing to invest in productive activities - who are therefore delaying their investment decisions. One would also need to ask whether this is also a time of uncertainty for democracies or whether the EU is at risk of disintegrating. In the meantime the speculators continue to make a killing as evidenced by the volatility of the stock markets and the currency markets.

It is worth focusing on what could be described as the final thoughts of this convention - the speech delivered by Pope Benedict XVI. He made a crucial statement when he said that finance should be subordinated to politics and that every activity should be guided by ethics. When one hears such a statement one wonders whether what is being advocated here is greater intervention by the state in the financial services sector of the economy, or even in the productive activities of the economy.

I do not believe so. What we require today is not renewed state intervention in the economy (we know that such a policy proved to be a big failure), but the courage by political leaders to enact the appropriate legislation to ensure that the greedy few do not destroy through speculation the economic well-being of the many.

This creates the need for ethical behaviour as one can only speak of appropriate development and progress if we look after the common good. Moreover, the term "common good" has many components and cannot be limited to general economic well-being.

We need to include other aspects such as social well-being, cultural heritage, effective democratic institutions, education, as well as moral and spiritual well-being. While economic times were good, the pursuit for ever increasing material wealth assumed supremacy over the other components of economic good.

In other words, as long as the money was rolling in (even though notionally, many a time) one could ignore issues related to ethical behaviour. The severe economic crisis has brought ethical behaviour back on to our radar screen.

This links to another aspect that was brought up at the convention. Ethics and economics are intertwined with each other: every economic choice implies an ethical choice as an integral part of it.

So the promotion of well-being cannot be limited just to the pursuit of maximising consumption but to the development of the whole person and to the search of the common good.

This leads to two considerations. First, governments and businesses cannot be short termist in their approach but must also look at the long-term impact of their actions and decisions. Second, placing one's confidence and trust exclusively in personal wealth (as has happened in the past years) creates social inequalities.

One of the things which struck me in the various presentations made was the statement that profit is not a dirty word as long as it is the just reward of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is a necessary tool for human development. Wealth needs to be invested in productive activities. Wealth which is left idle or is invested in speculative activities is sinful. This is why the economy has to be put to the service of human dignity and why, after all, finance should be subjected to politics, which has the responsibility to look after the common good.