Catholic Social Teaching Demands: Compassion before Profits

By Fr Stan Muyebe OP – The Church’s teachings and successive popes have made it clear that compassion, the dignity of the human person and the common good must always take precedence over profits. A class action lawsuit launched by the Catholic Church in South Africa puts that teaching into action. 

One of the Church’s best-kept secrets, it is often said, is the Catholic Social Teachings. This means that many people are not aware of the extensive and progressive social justice principles outlined by the Catholic Church, even though they are readily available in Church documents.

The Church in Southern Africa is working quietly to implement these teachings, through various departments in the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), through initiatives by religious orders such as the Jesuit Refugee Services or the Scalabrinians, through many lay-run organisations, through the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office, through Justice & Peace chapters in dioceses and parishes, and so on.

These entities sustain the Catholic Social Teachings in many different ways, through active engagement and through advocacy.

Case against mining giants

An example of active engagement is a class action lawsuit brought in 2024 by the Catholic Church through the SACBC Justice & Peace Commission to assist sick mine workers in getting justice.

The respondents are five major coal mining companies — Glencore, Anglo American, South32, BHP Billiton, and Exxaro. This “coal class action” seeks fair compensation for mine workers who contracted black lung disease while working in those companies’ South African coal mines.

Coal mine dust can lead to lung diseases such as pneumoconiosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in miners (see sidebar). Despite being aware of these risks, those in the coal mining industry neglected to provide workers with proper training, equipment and a safe working environment.

All Catholics should call on these corporate giants to demonstrate compassion towards the affected mine workers. Catholic Social Teaching emphasises “corporate compassion” — the idea that businesses must balance profit-making with moral responsibility and care for those harmed by their operations.

No room for compassion?

It seems strange to speak of “business” and “compassion” in the same sentence. This is because we have been conditioned to believe that companies exist solely to maximise shareholder returns, and the business world has therefore no room for compassion.

However, we must begin to view the business world through the lens of the Gospel, and not only through the lens of the corporate world. In this regard, Popes John Paul II and Francis in particular always insisted that business should be viewed as a vocation at the service of the common good, something which will likely be emphasised during the Jubilee of Entrepreneurs in May.

This requires that companies respond to allegations of causing harm not by aggressive risk management but with empathy and care.

Too often, when accused of causing human rights harms, the instinctive reaction of companies is to resort to avoidance of responsibility in order to limit liability. In their approach, we see mining companies dehumanising sick miners and reducing them to “risks” that need to be contained, rather than human persons who deserve empathy and care.

The pain and suffering of people who are sick because of their work conditions are viewed solely in terms of financial liability. Some companies believe that the only way to respond is to deliberately drag out legal proceedings for years on end, sometimes to five and ten years, hoping the financial liability will disappear as more sick mine workers succumb to illness and die. It is our fervent hope that the mining companies in this case will see the moral depravity of this approach.

A good example

If the mining companies choose the path of corporate compassion, then they should follow the laudable example set by Maple Leaf Foods in their listeriosis case in Canada. When confronted with allegations of causing societal harm, Maple Leaf Foods took two significant steps. First, it did not object to the certification of the class action. Second, it sought a timely settlement to expedite much-needed compensation to the victims.

This approach illustrates that when the ethics of compassion guides corporate conduct, sustainable profitability and corporate compassion are not mutually exclusive. They can go hand-in-hand when a company is willing to take ethical responsibility for its actions and do what is right for those it has wronged.

Pope Francis’ 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti (on fraternity and social friendship) reminds us that corporate compassion stems from another Gospel value, that of fraternity — the sense that we all belong to one human family with God as our common parent, as we affirm in the Lord’s Prayer. We are therefore required to show compassion to the most vulnerable in our society because we share the same parent — God as our Creator and our Redeemer.

Pope Francis uses the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37) to challenge us to build a world, including a corporate world, that is driven by the spirit of fraternity and encounter, which then leads to the spirit of compassion.

Who’s my brother?

When we make pastoral visits to the sick coalminers in remote rural villages, I sometimes feel that their plight mirrors the circumstances of the robbery victim in the parable. Just as the man in the parable was beaten and left for dead by the roadside, the sick miners have been violated by the unfair extractive system, and then left for the dead. Those with political and corporate power seem to pass them by, refusing to stop to touch and bind the wounds of the ailing miners.

To the companies named in the coal class action, we should therefore pose the question God put to Cain in Genesis 4:9: “Where is your brother? Where is your sister?” And: “Where are the mine workers who toiled to reap your immense profits?”

Cain’s reply was: “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” We should pray that the mining companies choose not Cain’s callous reply, but rather a commitment to corporate compassion, ethical accountability, as well as swift and just compensation.

Fr Stan Muyebe OP is the director of the SACBC Justice & Peace Commission.

Published in the April 2025 issue of The Southern Cross