It has been a wonderful, rewarding experience. It has also endowed me with the chutzpah, the cheek, to do what the Americans so colourfully term, telling things like they are. Which is precisely what I intend to do. And I hope the other panellists and participants will be similarly unrestrained. It is a time for speaking plainly since there is not a lot of time: not practically, and certainly not figuratively.

Last month, in Geneva, world business leaders pledged their support to the Secretary- General of the United Nations in his endeavours 

One outcome was an agreement to conclude what is called the Global Compact. This summarised the goals of the United Nations as peace and development, and the goals of business as the creation of wealth and prosperity. It foUND within these goals great potential for mutual support between the UN and the business world. And, in a heavily significant sentence, the world body and the business world agreed (and I quote) that:

"By creating wealth and jobs, companies help to defeat poverty the enemy of the humanitarian values shared by business."

Reverend Gentlemen and Ladies, Ladies and Gentlemen, there is no way that business - let alone the United Nations - will get to first base without the intervention and support of the faith communities, whether in the developed or the developing worlds. Let me briefly explain why I think this.

When we talk - often so glibly - about defeating poverty, do you appreciate what it is we are talking about'? We are talking, for example, about what has now become a global aim: to reduce the level of poverty in the world by one-half in the next fifteen years. Do you know what that means?

It means that even a reduction of between 30 and 15 per cent among those who today are living on less than one dollar a day will still leave us with 900 million - 900 million! - people, living in poverty in 2015 ... And that is if the world community makes its very best effort. 

There is another wonderful aim:

This certainly is what the rate will be by 2015 if we do nothing. Nine million children will be born just to die, every year, and year on year.

I have not the slightest doubt that business has every best intention of being the true ally of the UN in the battle against poverty and all that it implies. The end of poverty, after all, has to be good for business on both the macro and micro levels. Global business certainly agrees with the slogan of a well-known American retailer which proclaims that, "An educated consumer is our best customer".  That's why business will acclaim the achievement of universal primary education in all countries by 2015 - if indeed it is achievable - and give it what support it can. 

And this, Reverend Gentlemen and Ladies, is where you come into the picture. I think we can all agree that prayer is a great support - a reinforcement even - for those who would do good for their fellows, their society and the world. And, as many of you will know better than I, prayer is often the sole support of those who need good to be done for them. Certainly, we have, will and should offer up prayers separately and collectively while we are here and in our daily lives. Prayers have a power totally unknown to those who don't know how to pray.

But, my friends, I also believe, passionately, that God helps those who help themselves - as well as those who are helped to help themselves by their fellow men.

Prayer and action must go hand in hand. You, who are at the grassroots in the developing world, who know, feel and smell poverty every day of your lives as you move among your communities, you must speak 

about those practical contributions they must to the reduction of poverty, inequality and suffering. You must talk about the need for sanitation, for health services, for education. You must talk about desalination for Africa, how in North-West Kenya there has been no rain for four years in a row, half the cattle have died and people wait by the roadside in the hope that today will be their turn for the water truck.

You all have a story to tell. Similarly, you who know, feel and enjoy the benefits of highly developed societies, must have the courage to talk to your business and industrial leaders - your parishioners, if I may use a good Anglican word - about the contribution they and their enterprises can make to providing millions with a chance of life.

Together, religion and business can be a powerful force for good. The two, in alliance with the United Nations, can be positively galvanic  -a powerhouse for the restoration of hope and opportunity, where fast both of these are dying. There is nothing the business world or even the UN can tell the religious world about globalisation - most of the great faiths have been in the business of globalisation for centuries. No enterprise has yet succeeded in taking its message across continents, even to the remotest parts, as religion has managed to do.

I really do not think you appreciate your own strength and your capacity to shape a better world. You command legions undreamed of by generals and politicians. You can reach the hearts and minds of mankind in a variety of ways. From my personal contacts with many of you, I know you to be capable of' inspiring the people way beyond your own faithful. Combine that individual strength and you have a tremendous force, one already endowed with something unique:

In that sense, Reverend Gentlemen and Ladies, Friends, we already have our global compact. That compact - the belief that we are all children of God, with an equal right to life and access to the world's natural resources - places upon us a special responsibility.

We do not dispose of the national and international budgets to achieve our purpose, nor the skilled manpower to implement it. But we do have the influence across the continents to change the hearts and priorities of men. We surely acknowledge the thousands who have already turned their minds and their hearts and their expertise to helping close the poverty gap. We must also open their minds to our input. Nobody knows better than the shepherds of religious flocks across the continents what acts of assistance might best assist their people to overcome their frightful deprivation. In one place it might be something, it can be something, no more sophisticated or costly than a water pump. In another, it might be a clinic, or a school or perhaps just a teacher, a nurse ... 

We have to hear what you see as the need. You have to say whether your needs are being met. We, collectively, have to ensure that your voices are being heard.

The poverty gap will not be closed by major projects alone: a dam, a bridge, a pumping station. So very often, there are the local solutions, the micro approach, which, for a small outlay, can help alleviate an oppressive condition. You and your colleagues in Africa, Asia, Latin America and some parts of Europe, know about these needs much better than any team of experts dispatched from New York, Brussels or Geneva. The world bodies engaged in the battles against poverty and inequality have to have the benefit of your input as well as your on-the-spot assessments - no matter how harsh - of how the battles are going, whether they are being won or lost.

The business world already has this capacity for making its views known. I am myself proud of the fact that when last I spoke at the UN here in New York upon receiving the Templeton Prize in 1998, I put forward a plan which resulted in the establishment of Human Business Partnership, a consultative council in which the business world could interrelate the religious world.

Two years later, Human Business Partnership is a thriving entity, in direct relationship in Britain with the Institute of Business Ethics and through the Institute with the Caux Round Table, which must be known to many of you.

But it is time now for religion to speak up with its singular voice. That is why I would like to see this conference establish a liaison-monitoring group, of, say, no more than ten or twelve world religious leaders. This should act as a conduit to the business community and to the UN of information about local needs on a nation-by-nation basis. Shopping lists, if you like. It should also act as a report-back agency on how those needs have been tackled, say on an annualised basis. Such an outcome would give this Millennium Conference of World Religious Leaders a purpose way beyond the very fine one of coming together and meeting in fellowship and with respect and declaring our support for the aims of the UN . It would also place the religious world alongside such great global organisations as Rotary International which operates in 162 countries and embraces over a million business and professional people with an interest in serving the widest possible community. There is the potential for an alliance there and with the other religious and secular organisations, engaged in the battle against poverty.

I also know that we would have the active support and assistance of Her Majesty's Government. This has been made clear to me on a number of occasions.

The religious community has to take its rightful and front-rank role, collectively, as the voice of conscience. It is specially in this capacity - the voice of conscience - that religious leaders should seek to mediate between those who have been taking part in riots against the world Trade Organisation and those against whom they have been rioting, the world leaders who comprise the directorate of the Organisation.

Apart from the agitators and professional troublemakers, we have to realise that there are millions of young people across the globe who have made enviromnental protection their cause and who, for whatever reason, see the promotion of global trade as threatening their concerns for the future of their world.

There is a significant, important and image-raising role for religious leadership to play in bringing together in dialogue both sides to this important argument, to diffusing the anger on the one side and explaining the passion to the other. It must be part and parcel of the religious concern to promote justice and equality for all humankind.

Blessed be he that considereth the poor, declared the Psalmist.

It is now time for the world religious community, not just to remember in their prayers the poor, the deprived, the suffering millions of the underdeveloped world. It is time for us to join in practical action, across our barriers of faith.

And I do believe that from this session we can embark on a practical way forward.