Stocks slumped today in Europe and in early trading in the United States as the global financial system continues to be battered by bank failures.

Addressing the Synod of Bishops this morning in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI said, “We see it now in the collapse of the great banks that money disappears, it’s nothing.”

The Pope alluded to Christ’s reference in Matthew 7:26 to “a house built on sand” in explaining that ultimate security rests only in faith in God, not in material possessions.

At a press conference later in the day in Rome, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said Benedict “was expressing his spirituality” in his remarks about the financial crisis.

“Economics falls in the scope of a particular action but it is a limited, penultimate truth,” Archbishop Celli said. “It is not the ultimate truth, the one which is most important to our lives. Economics is still important but unsubstantial relative to Christ.”

For a thoughtful commentary by Mark Stricherz about how bad regulation — during the presidencies of both Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush — contributed to the global financial crisis, click here.

— Tom McFeely