Co-op pope

October is Coop Month and in a matter of days, some 4,500 cooperators representing more than 20,000 coop organizations throughout the country will gather in Cebu City for the 12th National Co-operative Summit.

The biennial gathering is being held for the first time under the auspices of the cooperative apex body Philippine Cooperative Center (PCC) which is being chaired by the Cebu-based secondary coop, VICTO National.

Side by side with PCC, VICTO is leading the charge together with the Philippine Cooperative Central Fund Federation (PCF) in making the cooperative model the preferred type of business.

The summit theme, “Raising the Bar,” among other topics, will be in the conversation in this week’s episode of “Co-op TV” featuring Doris Canares and Elsie Remonte, PCC chairman and chief executive officer respectively.

“Co-op TV” airs every Saturday at 6 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. over CCTN Channel 47.

Halfway across the globe, over 2,000 cooperative leaders are also gathered in Québec City, Canada for the International Summit of Cooperatives, all eager to hear about groundbreaking research in the social economy. Around this time, delegates must still feel the excitement over the launch of the 2014 World Economic Monitor, billed as the first multi-dimensional ranking of coops worldwide.

This is a project of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) featuring the latest growth and trends of the movement in the context of the global economy.

There is a lot of excitement, a sense of bigger things to come and better times ahead for the sector.

The ICA has launched the blueprint for a cooperative decade, and in the words of ICA President Dame Pauline Green in her opening address before Quebec summiteers, the global movement has “broken through the glass ceiling of international business representation”. This is in reference to the ICA’s participation for the first time ever in the B20 conference in which the ICA highlighted cooperative contribution to the global economy.

If the top 300 cooperatives and mutuals have a turnover of US$2 trillion which is equivalent to the world’s ninth largest economy, it should have a voice in setting world policies aimed at sustainable economic growth. The G20 leaders will meet next month in Australia and ICA will keenly observe how G20 will assess cooperative recommendations.

Significantly, Dame Pauline Green also mentioned in her opening remarks that the Alliance participated in a conference organized by the Vatican in October last year.

This was an interesting meeting because Pope Francis launched “a tough critique of injustices in today’s society, and particularly the failure of the present economic model to meaningfully integrate young as well as elderly people.”

The post conference report with Pope Francis published in the ICA website quoted the Holy Father as having questioned “how society could let itself be carried to a point where highly developed nations such as Spain and Italy arrive at a 40% youth unemployment rate”.

He also took a swipe at mainstream media even as he emphasized confidence in cooperative enterprise to build a future where people are at the center instead of profit objectives.

“If a block away people die of cold or hunger, it receives no news attention. Meanwhile, if stocks fall 2 or 3 points in London or New York, it’s on air immediately”, Pope Francis said.

The report did not give other details about the meeting but Dame Pauline Green in her blog described it in a way that depicts the Pope as a pastor with a keen understanding of the cooperative as economic model.

“It’s true to say that we were all mightily impressed with the Pope’s intimate knowledge and understanding of our movement.

All alone with no staff or advisers and not a note or briefing paper to be seen, he spoke our cooperative language during a 45-minute informal discussion.

Stopping once with a laugh to apologize for giving us a sermon, the Pope argued that global leaders need to understand that coops are not just something for moments of crisis, but the way in which economic life should go in the future.”

(from the April 2014 blog of Andrew McLeod “Cooperate and no one gets hurt”)

Andrew McLeod, a cooperative development consultant, said the Pope must have been thinking of cooperatives and his encounter with ICA leaders when he gave a message to the Third Festival of the Social Doctrine of the Church a month later:

“Also a thought on cooperation: I met several representatives of the world of cooperatives.We had a meeting here in this room some months ago. I was very consoled, and I think it is good news for everyone to hear that in responding to the crisis net profits have gone down while the employment level has been maintained. Work is so important. Work and the dignity of the person go hand in hand. Solidarity must also be applied to guarantee work; cooperation is an important element to ensure a plurality of presence among employers in the market. Today this is the subject of some misunderstanding even at the European level yet I maintain that failure to consider this form of presence as relevant in the world of production constitutes an impoverishment that leaves room for homologations and fails to promote difference and identity.”

This part of the Pope’s message had a sub-head “A Co-op Pope?” by the author.

And here, Pope Francis reveals his coop identity:
I remember — I was a teenager — I was 18 years old: it was 1954, and I heard my father speak on Christian cooperativism and from that moment I developed an enthusiasm for it, I saw that it was the way. It is precisely the road to equality, not to homogeneity, but to equality in difference. Even economically it goes slowly. I remember that reflection my father gave: it goes forward slowly, but it is sure.

Was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first Jesuit and Argentinian pope, reared by a family of co-operators?

I think so. His recollection of his father Mario, an accountant employed by the railways, speaking about Christian cooperativism suggests he was a cooperative leader or at the very least, a coop educator.

We have a Co-op pope!

What a way to celebrate the Decade of Co-operatives!