“The Church is neither a lobby group nor an NGO”, said Card. Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, speaking at the international conference on “Prospects for service to integral human development: fifty years since Populorum Progressio” that is taking place at the Vatican until tomorrow. “The Church does not exist for herself, it is Church insofar as she is Church for others”, the Cardinal pointed out. “It is about saving humanity, building human society”, this is the task entrusted to the Christian community that is called to “cooperate with all men and women of good will, even with atheists, on the most urgent matters of our age: the inviolable dignity of the human person, social justice, solidarity and peace in the family of peoples, the fight against destructive powers and forces that are against man”. “We cannot see Christianity as a bourgeois adaptation of its message”, the Cardinal admonished, “reducing our love for the other to individual almsgiving” and the Church to “a social and humanitarian NGO”. “Piety towards God and responsibility for the world are intrinsically connected in Christ – Card. Müller continued – Who came into the world not to free us from them, but to bring them back in line with the saving plan of God”. The Cardinal warned against the risk of progress achieved through “totalitarian development”, such as that of “the political ideologies of the 21st century, which, in a disguised manner, have perpetuated to the present time their perverse thinking and destructive work”. “The alternative between good and evil cannot be excluded at any stage of the process”, Card. Müller argued, adding that the Church has a duty – on the basis of Gaudium et Spes and Populorum Progressio – “to cooperate, in a constructive way, not a destructive one, in securing dignified living conditions for man” through “dialogue and cooperation with politics, society and all living beings on earth”. Starting with the “tragedy of refugees knocking at our doors”, the Cardinal concluded.