Big business, including large-scale mining, may be pursued as long as companies demonstrate genuine concern and compassion for their workers and the communities within which they operate.
This was the opinion expressed by Msgr. Fernando Capalla, archbishop of Davao and former president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.
In a recent interview at his residence in Davao City, Capalla acknowledged the economic value of industry and commerce, but urged companies to adopt “holistic” approaches to human development.
Companies must “not only develop the body of the human person but also his soul and spirit. And developers and miners should also make this a priority. In other words, they should see development from their own perspective, from the perspective of the people they will be working with, and from the perspective of the recipients of their development projects,” he said.
Capalla has helmed the influential Bishops-Ulama Forum, organized in 1996 in the spirit of interreligious dialogue and commitment to the peace process. For his work in peacebuilding, he was conferred the Public Service Award by the Ateneo de Manila University in 1998.
Asked whether standard corporate giveaways like school bags and waiting sheds conformed with his “holistic” approach to development, he said this wasn’t enough.
“I’ve read many books on economics where (management) goes down to the level of their employees and even their families…and then their productivity improves because they are in touch with the human resource,” he said.
Capalla recalled that in 1963, when he was a young student in the United States, he was known only by his number: 21-C 106175. He chuckles at the thought but notes that in some companies, one is regarded as a mere statistic.
The prelate explained that the basis of this bias towards social development is “the philosophy of the human person, which to me was the main foundation of the philosophy of Pope John Paul II.” The latter, posthumously credited with having authored several social encyclicals, was widely regarded as having abhorred the excesses of both Communism and Capitalism.
Capalla also lamented the advent of commercialism, which he blames for society’s undue attention to material things at the expense of education, health, and the arts.
“The culture that we have now in Mindanao is getting to be very, very one-sided,” he warned.
“I mean secularistic, materialistic. Take art. Fine arts. Even in schools, our culture prepares people only for business and development, and to go abroad. But (almost) nothing about other parts of culture: arts and writing, and music, etc. The need of the human being is not just money and food. People live by the word, by values, music. But the culture now is not like that. The development of the intellect is not promoted by the digital culture. We are now beginning to be slaves of the machine,” he said.
Despite what he believes is a pervasive malaise, Capalla remained upbeat, even about corporations’ growing openness to care for their stakeholders. “There are signs of hope,” he says. “It’s already happening, based on my experience, for 36 years as bishop in Mindanao. I’m talking about persons in the Church, in business, in politics, in the communities, Muslims, Christians.”
