ROME – Pope Francis said Saturday that stable employment coupled with government policies in favor of the family, as opposed to merely “speculative” forms of business enterprise, are the pillars of “sustainable development and a harmonious growth in society.

“I confirm an appeal to generate and accompany processes that can give rise to new opportunities for dignified work,” the pope said. “Unease among youth, pockets of poverty, and the difficulties young people face in starting families and bringing children into the world, have their common denominator in the lack of sufficient job openings.”

During a visit to the Italian city of Genoa in late May, Francis criticized business models based on “speculation and short-term profit, and he repeated the point on Saturday.

“An alliance of synergies and initiatives is needed so that financial resources are placed at the service of [supporting work and families], which is of great breadth and social value, and not diverted and dispersed in largely speculative investments that denote the lack of a long-term design,” he said.

In the end, Francis said, speculative forms of business activity suggest “weakness and an instinct to flee from the challenges of our time.”

Providing adequate employment and support for families, he said, are essential to allow people to look to the future “not with resignation and fear, but with creativity and trust.”

The pontiff was speaking during an official visit to Italian President Sergio Mattarella held at Rome’s Quirinale Palace, the erstwhile residence of Italy’s kings and, since 1946, its president, with a total complex estimated to be twenty times larger than the White House. In a reminder of the tight bonds between church and state here, the Quirinale has also been home to thirty popes over the centuries.

Although the Quirinale technically remains an Apostolic Palace, it’s the only one without a church regularly open to the public. It does, however, have a chapel dedicated to the Annunciation of Mary, originally designed as part of the private apartment of Pope Paul V in 1610, and Francis and Mattarella made a brief stop in it on Saturday.

(As a footnote, after the Quirinale was taken over by Italy’s secular leaders, the chapel was occasionally used as a dish-washing station during receptions staged in nearby salons.)

This was the fifteenth time a pope has visited the Quirinale since it was taken over by Italy’s civil head of state, with the first coming by Pope Pius XII in 1939 when the country was still ruled by the Savoy monarchy, and it was Francis’s second visit following a November 2013 meeting with then-President Giorgio Napolitano.

Francis arrived at the Quirinale in his customary blue Ford Focus. He made the stop on Saturday as a follow-up to Mattarella’s own visit to the Vatican in April 2015, shortly after taking office.

Under the Italian system, the President of the Republic doesn’t have much of a day-to-day role in government, which is largely in the hands of Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. However, the president is considered a key moral authority and guarantor of stability.

Pope Francis told Mattarella on Saturday that he looks to Italy with hope, in part because of his own family background.

“It’s a hope rooted in grateful memory of its parents and grandparents, who include my own, because my roots are in this country,” the Argentine pope said. The pontiff’s grandparents emigrated to Argentina from the northern Italian region of the Piedmont in the 1920s.

The pope praised Italy for its commitment to what he called the “fundamental values” of the dignity of the human person, the family, and work. He then ticked off a number of European and global issues where he believes Italy is positioned to play a leadership role, including:

  • International terrorism.
  • The “migratory phenomenon.”
  • Wars.
  • “Persistent social and economic inequalities.”
  • “The difficulties young people face in finding stable and dignified work.”

Italy’s resources have been especially strained by Europe’s current refugee crisis, its worst since the Second World War, given that the country’s Mediterranean coast is a popular point of arrival for migrants seeking to enter Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

Current estimates by the Italian government are that more than a half-million immigrants have entered the country over the last three years alone, which is a total larger than the population of Florence, capital of Italy’s Tuscany region.

Francis praised Italy’s efforts to welcome those new arrivals, saying it’s a testament to the country’s ability to transform challenges into opportunities.

“Proof of it, among other things, lies in the welcome given to numerous refugees who disembark on its coasts, the work of first aid provided by its navy in the Mediterranean, and the effort of hosts of volunteers, among whom are associations of ecclesiastical entities and a deep network of parishes,” Francis said.

The pontiff also praised the strong faith shown by central Italians in January 2017, when a series of four strong earthquakes struck the region, leaving at least 34 people dead, tens of thousands homeless, and several small towns devastated.

As part of the event with Mattarella, Francis was to meet a group of roughly 200 children from the earthquake zone in the garden of the Quirinale Palace after meeting with the president.

In the case of both the refugee crisis and also the earthquakes, Francis said the way Italians have responded is rooted in their faith.

“They are expressions of feelings and attitudes that find their most genuine source in the Christian faith,” he said.

The pontiff also hailed the vitality of the Italian Catholic Church, and expressed gratitude for the support shown by the government to the Vatican. He called the collaboration between church and state in Italy an example of what emeritus Pope Benedict XVI called “positive secularism.”

“The mission of the successor of Peter wouldn’t be possible without the cordial and generous willingness of the Italian state to collaborate,” he said, pledging that it will always find in the church “the best ally for growth of the society, for its concord and its true progress.”

In his remarks, Matterella said Francis’s teaching has inspired a “deep sense of responsibility within the government” to pursue policies of “employment and dignity for all.” He also praised Francis’s encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, and reaffirmed the Italian commitment to support the Paris agreement on climate change it helped to inspire.

Late May and early June is a busy diplomatic season for Pope Francis. On May 24 he met U.S. President Donald Trump in the Vatican, and on June 17, he’ll receive German Chancellor Angela Merkl.