Maybe it is a sign of aging, Pope Francis said, but he is increasingly concerned about what kind of world he and his peers will leave for younger generations — and the prognosis is not good. Source: CNS.
“This isn’t pessimism,” the Pope told about two dozen representatives of popular movements and grassroots organisations meeting on Friday at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Pope Francis said he feared adults are leaving behind “a world discouraged, inferior, violent, marked by the plundering of nature, alienated by dehumanised modes of communication” and “without the political, social and economic paradigms to lead the way, with few dreams and enormous threats”.
But, he said, if people join forces, especially with those who are most often the victims, things can change.
And he prayed that “the cry of the excluded” would “awaken the slumbering consciences of so many political leaders who are ultimately the ones who must enforce economic, social and cultural rights.”
Pope Francis was meeting with representatives of movements and organisations from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia, including those that organise informal workers who collect and recycle trash, gather people who live in the informal settlements on the outskirts of cities, rally citizens to promote care of the environment, assist subsistence farmers and rescue migrants at sea.
Pope Francis told the leaders that the injustices that keep too many people poor, malnourished, unemployed and on the margins of their community’s social and political life fuel violence and ultimately war.
He said he has been criticised for never speaking up for the middle class, “and I apologise for that,” he said. But at the same time, “it was Jesus who put the poor at the centre.”
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Love for the poor and for creation is key to a future of hope, Pope says (By Cindy Wooden, CNS)
