'Lack of moral sense of right and wrong led to UK riots': Pope Benedict XVI

London, Sept 10 (ANI): Pope Benedict XVI has said loss of awareness of what is right and wrong among people was the reason behind last month's riots in Britain.

The Daily Mail quoted the Pope, as saying that 'moral relativism' had spread across British society to such a degree that many people no longer held shared values and were confused about what constituted wrongful actions.

The Pope told the Britain's ambassador to the Vatican City, Nigel Baker, that it would be wise for the government 'to employ policies that are based on enduring values that cannot be simply expressed in legal terms'.

"This is especially important in the light of events in England this summer," the paper quoted him, as saying.

"When policies do not presume or promote objective values, the resulting moral relativism tends instead to produce frustration, despair, selfishness and a disregard for the life and liberty of others," he added.

"Policy-makers are therefore right to look urgently for ways to uphold excellence in education, to promote social opportunity and economic mobility, and to examine ways to favour long-term employment," he added.

Benedict XVI been, who has always been a harsh critic of 'relativism,' claimed that Western societies were becoming so oblivious to objective standards of morality that they risked becoming engulfed by a 'dictatorship of relativism'.

The theory of relativism says that there can be no objective standard on which to base morality. (ANI)