The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences wrapped up its Plenary Assembly on Tuesday with a call for inclusion of the most marginalized in society.
The five-day Plenary Session focused on the theme “Towards a Participatory Society: New Roads to Social and Cultural Integration”.
A message from Pope Francis provided the guidelines for the Plenary. Recalling the movements and the battles for the rights of workers in the past two centuries, the Pope pointed out that “those battles are far from over” and called for a new world vision that has the value of fraternity at its basis.
Present at this mornings’ press conference in the Vatican was one of the participants of the Plenary, Professor Paulus Zulu who highlighted the fact that in Africa one of the major causes for exclusion is to be found in political systems which prevent the people from accessing even the basic resources of life.
Listen:
Professor Zulu explains that in Africa there is a crisis of representative democracy which leads to major causes of social exclusion. Consequently, he says, there are growing inequalities.
“One of the consequences – migration – often represents a response to these inequalities” he says.
“Some of the excluded populations, he says, try to seek measures of existence – not only just inclusion – measures of existence outside their continent” or country.
Prof. Zulu concludes that that is one of the manifestations which one would refer to as original.
“Part of the solution, or what communities deem as the possible mechanism, is through social movements which are trying to garner mechanisms towards social inclusion, particularly access, where inclusion leads to access of the basic resources of life” he says.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) “The Lord softens those with hard hearts, those who condemn all who are outside the law.” This was the message of Pope Francis homily, during tuesday’s Mass in the Vatican’s Santa Marta residence. He said that those who are hard hearted do not know the tenderness of God and his ability to remove hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh.
Beginning with the first reading, in which St Stephen was stoned to death by the temple authorities in Jerusalem, the Pope reflected on the witness of Christian obedience. He said that those who stoned Stephen to death did not understand the word of God. Stephen had called them “circumcised of heart,” which was the equivalent of calling someone a pagan.
According the Pope, there are different ways of not understanding the word of God. For example, when Jesus had met the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, he had called them “fools.” This was not an expression of praise, but it was also not a strong word either, unlike Stephen’s expression.
“They did not understand, they were afraid, because they did not want problems, they had fear, but they were good men, open to the truth” said the Pope.
“And when Jesus rebuked them, they let his words enter them and their hearts burned within them, whilst those who stoned Stephen were furious and did not want to listen!” This, according to the Pope, is the drama of the closed hearted.
Turning to Psalm 94, the Lord admonished his people not to harden their hearts. Then Pope Francis said, the prophet Ezekiel makes a “beautiful promise” to change the heart of stone into a heart of flesh, a heart that knows how to listen and receive the witness of obedience.
“This causes suffering in the Church. The closed hearts, the hearts of stone, the hearts which do not want to be open, do not want to hear, the hearts which only know the language of condemnation. They know how to condemn, they do not know how to say ‘Explain it to me, why do you say this? Why this? Explain it to me.’ No, they are closed. That’s all they know. They have no need of explanations,” said Pope Francis.
The rebuke that Jesus speaks of also led to the killing of the prophets, “because they spoke to you what you did not want to hear. A closed heart cannot let the Holy Spirit enter in.”
Pope Francis said “There was no place in their hearts for the Holy Spirit. In fact, the letter today speaks of how Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit, he had understood everything, he was a witness to the obedience of the word made flesh, and this was done by the Holy Spirit. He was filled. A closed heart, a hardened heart, a pagan heart doesn’t let the spirit in and feels himself in himself”
According to the Pope, the disciples on the road to Emmaus represent us, “with our many doubts, many sins. Many times we want to move away from the Cross, from the truth, but let us make space to hear Jesus, who makes our hearts burn. The other group, who are closed in the rigidity of the law, who do not want to hear Jesus, are saying worse things than Stephen did.”
The Pope concluded with a reflection on the meeting between Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. He said that every one of us enters into a dialogue between Jesus and the victim of the hearts of stone, the adulteress. And to those who want to stone her, Jesus says “Look within yourselves:”
“Today, we look at the tenderness of Jesus, the witness of obedience, that great witness, Jesus, who has given life, which makes us look for the tenderness of God, confronting us, our sins, our weaknesses. Let us enter this dialogue and let us call for the grace of the Lord which softens the rigid hearts of those people who are always closed in the law and condemn all who are outside the law. They do not know that the word became flesh, that the word is a witness to obedience. They do not know the tenderness of God and his ability to take out the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.”
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) On May 1st the Church remembers Saint Joseph the worker, a day marked across the globe as International Labour Day.
Pope Francis ’ thoughts in these days go especially towards young people as expressed in his May 1st tweet: “May Saint Joseph give young people the ability to dream, to take risks for big tasks, the things that God dreams for us,” many of whom are faced with unprecedented high rates of unemployment and socio-financial difficulties.
And in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that in these days is holding its Plenary Assembly in the Vatican (28 April-2 May), the Pope recalls the “hard battles” of workers during the 19th and 20th centuries which took place “in the name of solidarity and rights”.
He says these battles “are far from over” pointing to the “social exclusion and marginalization of millions of men and women today.”
“Today, solidarity is not sufficient, it is necessary to increase the parameters of the traditional concept of justice” he said.
In the current liberal and individualistic vision of the world, he continues, almost everything has become a “trade commodity”; in a “state-centric” vision everything is accomplished out of “duty”. These are two visions, the Pope says, that have not and will not solve the grave problems of economy and work.
In his message the Pope says it is “necessary to attempt new paths that are inspired by Christ’s message.”
He says the key word is fraternity and he highlights the content of Pope Pius XI’s social encyclical issued in 1931: “Quadragesimo Anno,” which he says, decries the egoism which is at the basis of injustice and is the opposite of fraternity. He points out that it also foresaw the affirmation of a “global economic dictatorship” that Pius XI called the “international imperialism of money”.
The solution, Pope Francis says, is a fraternal society in which work “before being conceived as a right, is recognized as a capacity and an inalienable need of each person”.
Only in a fraternal society, he says, can work be “just”, meaning that not only will it assure an equitable remuneration, but it will correspond to the vocation of the person and therefore be able to contribute to the development of his or her capacities and talents.
“This is the proposal of the Gospel – a proposal that is able to create a new humanism” the Pope says, and “a new energy that will generate freedom, justice, peace and dignity for all”.
Pope Francis concludes his message quoting from a speech to managers and workers of the Terni steel mill in 2014: “Dear brothers and sisters, never stop hoping for a better future. Fight for it, fight. Do not be trapped in the vortex of pessimism, please! If each one does his or her part, if everyone always places the human person — not money — with his dignity at the centre, if an attitude of solidarity and fraternal sharing inspired by the Gospel is strengthened, you will be able to leave behind the morass of a hard and difficult economic season of work”.
(from Vatican Radio)…