“They truly believe in good, they are pure,” while the powerful are too sure of themselves and “unconvertible.” Since then, thousands of people around the world have taken concrete action in the name of inclusion.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 24/04/2025
Pope Francis will leave many spiritual and ethical legacies. One directly concerns the economy and therefore the Social Doctrine of the Church, which Francis has enriched and changed. I had my first meeting with him in the Vatican, at the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, on the occasion of the Summit “Global Common Good. For an increasingly inclusive economy,” on July 11 and 12, 2014. It was a meeting he wanted, personally convening some of the world's leading economic authorities, central bankers, Nobel Prize winner Yunus, important financiers, great economists... I was among the inspirers of that meeting, along with Stefano Zamagni, Leonardo Becchetti, and other colleagues. I spoke with him during lunch. Francis listened to everyone deeply. He spoke for two hours, listening. When he spoke, he said few words and used one of his powerful images, the alembic, to express the complicated concept of the anthropological reductionism of official economics: in today's economy, wine (real man) goes in and grappa (homo economicus) comes out.
That first meeting already told everyone how important economics and finance were to Francis and his vision of the Church. I was struck by something I mentioned in an interview, which has stayed with me as a constant theme throughout all these years spent with Francis: his choice of perspective from which to view capitalism. He wanted for himself the place of Lazarus in the parable of Luke's Gospel, under the table of the rich man, together with the dogs. And from there, faithful in his place as a lookout, in recent years he has seen a different landscape, very different from that seen by those—and they are the vast majority of observers—who sit next to the rich man. He looked at the rich man's table from below, and he saw different things, he showed us different and surprising things. And he invited us to change the world, first learning to look at it from the right perspective.
After that first meeting in 2014, I met him again four years later, on June 2, 2018. And there we talked about something that would soon become The Economy of Francesco. In those four years, some things had changed in the world, in Francis, and in me. There was the Synod on Young People. And here was the big, decisive change from that first 'summit of the great' in 2014: the idea, or rather the inspiration, was to convene a 'summit of the little ones', of young economists, of young men and women committed to reviving the economy. The idea was to call to Assisi, in the name and city of Francis, young people who want to change the world by changing the economy, young people who feel a vocation, an inner calling to do so. And so was born that movement of economists, entrepreneurs, and change makers who wanted to give themselves the name of Francis: The Economy of Francis—even though Pope Francis immediately showed some embarrassment at a name that involved him too much and always reminded us of the other Francis: an embarrassment that now, in heaven, he will no longer have.
Young people were the big news, and the big secret. So much so that no one talks about that 2014 summit of the great and the good anymore; there is only a trace of it in the news, while Economy of Francesco has been talked about for six years, and will be talked about more and more. Young people are a process, the process par excellence. When a young person sets out on a path, no one knows what will happen today or tomorrow. “Let's do something for the economy, but in Assisi, not in Rome. But let's do it with young people.” Because, he added in that private audience, “great economists are unconvertible,” they are too sure and too powerful to change. “Young people are not,” he concluded, “they truly believe in good, they are pure. I will come to Assisi, but I don't want to see anyone over 35.”
It was a strong mandate, which became his letter of convocation on May 1, 2019. We helped him, with Bishop Sorrentino, Francesca Di Maolo of the Serafico, Maria Gaglione, and thousands of young people from all over the world. Then came COVID, and from an event in Assisi, a global online process was born; the cancellation of the conference scheduled for March 22, 2020, gave rise to the Economy of Francesco Movement. A hundredfold, a hundred times over, a gift for many young people around the world, Catholics, people of other faiths, and non-believers, who have become better thanks to that gift, and who will become even better, and with them the economy and businesses.
More than three years after his letter, Francis arrived in person in Assisi. He was in a wheelchair, but he came because he wanted to come. When he saw me, I was moved like everyone else, but he said nothing. He looked at me, as he had done before, as if to say, 'I kept my promise, I am here for the young people.' And when, at the end of two hours that will remain among the images of paradise in my life, which I will carry imprinted in my eyes when I embrace the angel of death, Francis left, limping and with his back turned, the stage in Assisi, for those of us who were there, the message could not have been clearer: 'I have done my part, I have started the process: now it is up to you to continue it'. The same message we heard again on April 21 when, once again moved in a different way, we learned of his death.
Now is a time of mourning for EoF. But it is also a time of another joy, a joy that is sad, subdued, profound, and delicate. It is a joy that comes from gratitude for having met a man who was both great and small, a true companion of the poor man of Assisi, and from the certainty that an even more exciting adventure awaits us: that of trying not to disperse his legacy and ensuring that the seed he sowed and nurtured in the hearts of so many young people becomes a tree, a forest. And thus contribute to realizing that Economy of the Gospel that Francis wanted with all his heart. That pact he signed in Assisi with the young people has now become his testament.