A Future of Faith by Pope Francis

Author:Pope Francis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Address of Pope Francis to the participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements, Old Synod Hall, The Vatican

(October 28, 2014)

[…] The poor not only suffer injustice, they also struggle against it!

You are not satisfied with empty promises, with alibis or excuses. Nor do you wait with arms crossed for NGOs to help, for welfare schemes or paternalistic solutions that never arrive; or if they do, then it is with a tendency to anaesthetize or to domesticate … and this is rather perilous. One senses that the poor are no longer waiting. You want to be protagonists. You get organized, study, work, issue demands and, above all, practice that very special solidarity that exists among those who suffer, among the poor, and that our civilization seems to have forgotten or would strongly prefer to forget.

[…]

This meeting of ours responds to a very concrete desire, something that any father and mother would want for their children—a desire for what should be within everyone’s reach, namely land, housing and work. However, nowadays, it is sad to see that land, housing and work are ever more distant for the majority. It is strange but, if I talk about this, some say that the Pope is communist. They do not understand that love for the poor is at the center of the Gospel. Land, housing and work, what you struggle for, are sacred rights. […]

Land. At the beginning of creation, God created man and woman, stewards of his work, mandating them to till and to keep it. I notice dozens of farmworkers here, and I want to congratulate you for caring for the land, for cultivating it and for doing so in community. The elimination of so many brother and sister campesinos [farmers] worries me, and it is not because of wars or natural disasters that they are uprooted. Land and water grabbing, deforestation, unsuitable pesticides are some of the evils which uproot people from their native land.

[…]

Second: housing. I said it and I repeat it: a home for every family. We must never forget that, because there was no room in the inn, Jesus was born in a stable; and that his family, persecuted by Herod, had to leave their home and flee into Egypt.

[…]

Third: work. There is no worse material poverty—I really must stress this—there is no worse material poverty than the poverty which does not allow people to earn their bread, which deprives them of the dignity of work. But youth unemployment, casual or underground work, and the lack of labor rights are not inevitable. These are the result of an underlying social choice in favor of an economic system that puts profit above man. […]

Today, a new dimension is being added to the phenomena of exploitation and oppression, a very harsh and graphic manifestation of social injustice: those who cannot be integrated, the excluded, are discarded, the “leftovers.” This is the throwaway culture, and I would like to add something on this that I just remember now, I do not have it written down.

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