30 years ago today, Pope St John Paul II signed Centesimus Annus. He wrote that work with and for others is often rightly 'a matter of doing something for someone else'.

He then gives us all wake up calls, e.g. 1) '"Humane" working hours and adequate free-time need to be guaranteed, as well as the right to express one's own personality at the work-place without suffering any affront to one's conscience or personal dignity.'

2) '...what is being proposed as an alternative [to the absolute predominance of capital and possession] is not the socialist system, which in fact turns out to be State capitalism, but rather a society of free work, of enterprise and of participation.'