VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A leading Vatican diplomat warned that the current financial crisis could become a catastrophe unless solutions are found that respect ethics and involve all levels of society.

"It is necessary to recover some basic aspects of finances, such as the primacy of labor over capital, of human relationships over purely financial transactions, and of ethics over the sole criterion of efficiency," Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's apostolic nuncio to the United Nations, told Vatican Radio Nov. 28.

"For some time we've found ourselves in the middle of a financial crisis that could become a catastrophe if its effects are allowed to impact other crises: in economics, food and energy," he said.

Archbishop Migliore made the remarks on the eve of the U.N.-sponsored International Conference on Financing for Development Nov. 29-Dec. 2 in Doha, Qatar. The archbishop led a Vatican delegation to the conference.

He said the Vatican had been involved in planning for the conference, focusing on specific issues such as foreign debt, the mobilization of countries' internal resources, and the need to avoid forms of "economic neo-colonialism."

Archbishop Migliore echoed the Vatican's recent insistence that poor countries have a voice in responding to the financial crisis. He said a multilateral consensus on global economic issues cannot be "subordinated to the decisions of a few."

In fact, the archbishop said, the world's poor have turned out to be "the most trustworthy debtors, the ones who pay back debts and loans" and who have made the best use of the funds provided. Development financing, he said, has generally given excellent results, with real improvements in areas of health, education, housing and the workplace.

Archbishop Migliore said the current crisis calls for respect for ethical and legal norms.

"Regulations and ethical codes existed well before the crisis. The problem is that great impunity was given to those who didn't respect them," he said.

He said it's also a question of leadership by moral and civil authorities at all levels, who have the duty to respect their citizens.

Protection must be given especially to "the workers, those who save and ordinary people who are not able to understand the complicated financial engineering and who need to be defended against the tricks and abuses of sly people," he said.

© 2008 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops