Christianity has approximately 2.2 billion followers, almost one third of the population of the globe, being the largest religious community in the world.
37.5% of the total of Christians are located in the Americas (11.4% in the USA), 25.7% in Europe, 22.5% in Africa, 13.1% in Asia, 1.2% in Oceania and 0.9% in the Middle East, meaning that over 37% of the Christians on the planet are located in the two epicenters of the current financial earthquake - Europe and USA -, where they account for the majority of the population (an observation which gives us the right to say that the crisis concerns mostly the Christian finance).
The Eastern Orthodox Church has about 300 million followers, and the Roman-Catholic Church has about 1.2 billion.
The two documents reproduced in BURSA today - the Encyclical of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece and the Note of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace of the Vatican, speaking on behalf of the Orthodox, and of the Catholic Church, respectively - are separated by a period of ten months, but also by opposite visions when it comes to the essential points, even though for the most part they make similar statements on the importance of spiritual life.
The crossing between the two visions is marked by a disruption between the options for solving the crisis.
The Holy Synod of the Church of Greece recommends "asceticism", construed not as "deprivation of pleasure, but enriching our lives with meaning instead", and urges: "With this kind of spirit, gather round our great family, the Church, revealing our flaws, searching for the meaning of life in love, and we will endure these hard times".
The Vatican however, proposes the creation of a world Authority, which would be guided by the principle of subsidiarity: "According to the logic of subsidiarity, the Superior Authority, only offer the < < sub
