Vatican to call for global financial authority

The Vatican said today that it is preparing a series of proposals for reforming the global financial system that would include the creation of a "public authority with universal competence."

A document entitled "For a reform of the financial system through the perspective of a public authority with universal competence" will be presented on Monday by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The council's head, Ghanaian cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, will present it, the Vatican press office said without adding further details.

Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly called for an "intervention" by governments to tame financial markets and has emphasised the need to restore a fragile global economic system that is hurting poorest people the hardest.

"The global financial crisis showed the fragility of the current economic system and of the institutions associated with it," the pope said in April.

He said the crisis had also demonstrated "the mistake of continuing to think that the market is able to regulate itself without public intervention."