Don’t leave the poor behind, pope asks of governments, politicians
“I persist in my pestering. It is necessary to confront together the populist discourses of intolerance, xenophobia, and aporophobia, which is hatred of the poor.”
Pope Francis has called on people with authority to stop listening exclusively to the economic elites but instead be servants of the poor.
“Together with the poor of the earth, I wish to ask governments in general, politicians of all parties, to represent their people and to work for the common good.
"I want to ask them for the courage to look at their own people, to look people in the eye, and the courage to know that the good of a people is much more than a consensus between parties,” Pope Francis said in a video message October 16 to the World Meeting of Popular Movements.
“Let them stop listening exclusively to the economic elites, who so often spout superficial ideologies that ignore humanity's real dilemmas. May they be servants of the people who demand land, work, housing and good living,” Francis said.
The meeting brought together leaders of cooperatives and other grassroots organizations of the poor, the underemployed, indigenous communities.
“In the name of God, I ask financial groups and international credit institutions to allow poor countries to assure “the basic needs of their people” and to cancel those debts that so often are contracted against the interests of those same peoples,” he said.
“This system, with its relentless logic of profit, is escaping all human control,” he continued. “It is time to slow the locomotive down, an out-of-control locomotive hurtling towards the abyss. There is still time.”
Hence, “I persist in my pestering. It is necessary to confront together the populist discourses of intolerance, xenophobia, and aporophobia, which is hatred of the poor.
"Like everything that leads us to indifference, meritocracy and individualism, these narratives only serve to divide our peoples, and to undermine and nullify our poetic capacity, the capacity to dream together,” the pope said.
“Personal change is necessary, but it is also indispensable to adjust our socio-economic models so that they have a human face, because many models have lost it,” Francis said.
The post-truth plot
The pope pointed out that the social teaching of the Church does not have all the answers, “but it does have some principles that along this journey can help to concretize the answers, principles useful to Christians and non-Christians alike”.
The preferential option for the poor, the universal destination of goods, solidarity, subsidiarity, participation, and the common good are ways in which the Good News of the Gospel takes concrete form on a social and cultural level, he said.
“It sometimes surprises me that every time I speak of these principles, some people are astonished, and then the Holy Father gets labeled with a series of epithets that are used to reduce any reflection to mere discrediting adjectives. It doesn’t anger me, it saddens me. It is part of the post-truth plot that seeks to nullify any humanistic search for an alternative to capitalist globalization,” Francis said.
Some members of the Church get annoyed when the pope mentions these guidelines that belong to the full tradition of the Church, he said. “But the pope must not stop mentioning this teaching, even if it often annoys people, because what is at stake is not the pope but the Gospel.”
Better or worse?
Pope Francis also noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed social inequalities and “the heartbreaking situation of so many brothers and sisters.”
He said he has learnt that from a crisis one never emerges the same.
“We will not come out of this pandemic crisis the same. Come out better or come out worse but: the same as we were before? No. We will never emerge the same. And today together, always together, we have to face this question: “How will we emerge from this crisis? Better or worse?”
"Of course, we want to come out better, but to do so we have to break the bonds of what is easy and the docile acceptance that “there is no other way”, that “this is the only possible system.”
“Such resignation destroys “us” and substitutes the isolation of “every man for himself”. And so, we must dream. It worries me that, while we are still paralysed, “there are already projects underway to restore the same socio-economic structure we had before” because it is easier. Let us choose the difficult path. Let us come out better,” he said.
Pope Francis expressed his conviction that “the world can be seen more clearly from the peripheries” and thus, we must listen to the peripheries, open the doors to them and allow them to participate.
He urged the Popular Movements to reaffirm their commitment “to place the economy at the services of peoples to build a lasting peace based on social justice and on care for the Common Home.”