All Caritas members across Europe are welcome to the annual Caritas regional conference.
More than 120 delegates attended the conference. This year, Caritas Estonia was represented by Ingmar Kurg and Raigo Piil.
Each year, the focus is on a current topic that directly affects Caritas’ work. This time, the overarching theme was social innovation—how Caritas can better fulfil the task entrusted to it in a constantly changing world.
Since Caritas was called into being for the sake of people, it is vitally important to understand today’s way of life in order to effectively influence and change the world in the spirit of Christ’s Gospel.
The conference keynote speaker, the Belgian legal scholar Olivier De Schutter, spoke about where today’s social problems lie. They become most evident in the institutionalization of society.
State institutions have “taken over” solving social problems. By managing healthcare, education, the media, and the social sphere, the state leaves little room for innovation.
The primary interest of a democratic state is to win the votes of the electorate in order to obtain a mandate to run institutions, but this does not guarantee significant progress in improving social life. Nor can great hopes be placed in the private sector. The interest of innovative solutions in the private sector is to earn greater profit. A “successful” business plan in the private sector is to create, through the products or services being developed, a need for consumption as a problem, and then, by selling the same service, to offer a solution to that problem.
De Schutter explained the rules for bringing about social change. For change, a critical mass is necessary. Research shows that if 25% of social groupings represent a particular social norm and consistently uphold it, then it is quite likely that the whole society will accept those norms and adopt them. This is precisely the formula for the success of social innovation.
Caritas constitutes such a social organization that works with people at the grassroots level and acts for the common good of people, proceeding from the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, which are central in Catholic social teaching. At the conference, solutions were proposed for how, by communicating with people, Caritas can develop specific innovative projects.
These are like “incubators” into which the community and its needs are brought, so that activities may hatch from them that help everyone together toward the common good. Incubator projects, in turn, help to stimulate economic growth. Similar to Caritas, several other Catholic foundations also work with a new sustainability model, such as Porticus, Robert Bosch Stiftung, and the King Baudouin Foundation. Development work is supported by the European Social Fund’s Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) strand.
Caritas interprets the common good on the basis of the Catholic Church’s social teaching. Social teaching is a set of principles and practices that addresses social, economic, and political issues. Over the past 10 years, the Laudato Si’ movement initiated by Pope Francis has become well known, drawing attention to ecological issues. In Estonia, the Laudato Si’ movement has been promoted through the annual celebration of Creation Care Month by the Estonian Council of Churches.
The second major “innovation” of the conference was integrating young people into Caritas decision-making processes. The young people took over the whole stage at the conference to express their readiness to work in responsible positions in Caritas. To be able to do this, young people need delegation and training, trust and recognition. Surveying Caritas Europa member organizations, it became clear how little young people have been engaged in this way so far. Vanessa Glimelius from Sweden was elected as the representative of Caritas Youth Europe. Vanessa founded Caritas Youth Sweden in 2021 and has led it successfully.
The conference elected Caritas Europa’s new leadership. The new president is Bishop John Arnold from England. Our delegates Ingmar and Raigo kindly invited the new leaders to Estonia. Hopefully we will soon meet clergy and lay people who carry the spirit of Caritas among us here at home, to encourage one another and to teach one another to serve people in the way Christ sets the example.
Overview compiled by Raigo Piil