Last September 24, Joseph Kaboski, the President of CREDO, was the moderator of a conversation between Bishop Caggiani of Bridgeport, CT, and Sir Angus Deaton, Nobel laureate. The event was entitled “The Health of Nations: Pope Francis’ Call for Inclusion”. The speakers spoke on two, seemingly related, crises of inclusion in the world today. From the angle of Catholic social thought, Bishop Caggiano emphasized a crisis of how we understand who we are and the meaning of life as created in the Image of God and as members of humanity redeemed by Christ, which in turn leads to a crisis of solidarity, communion, and fraternity. Sir Angus Deaton summarized twin health crises related to inclusion: (i) a global health crisis in which the the poorest countries in which young people die of not only COVID but preventable diseases and the policies of advanced economies play an important role, and (ii) a domestic health crisis in the U.S., in which deaths of despair have ended over a century of progress in life expectancies. Deaton’s health crises reflect perhaps deeper social and spiritual crises. The discussioned covered wide territory from the roles of inequality to civil discourse and from corporate lobbying to international agencies.
The event lasted for more than two hours and a recording can be found here.
