...Francis went further than previous comments criticizing the global economic system, attacking the idolatry of money and beseeching politicians to guarantee all citizens dignified work, education and healthcare. He also called on rich people to share their wealth. Just as the commandment Thou shalt not kill sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say thou shalt not to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills, Francis wrote in the document issued on Tuesday. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses 2 points?... A meditation on how to revitalize a Church suffering from encroaching secularization in Western countries, the exhortation echoed the missionary zeal more often heard from the evangelical Protestants who have won over many disaffected Catholics in the popes native Latin America. In it, economic inequality features as one of the issues Francis is most concerned about, and the 76-year-old pontiff calls for an overhaul of the financial system and warns that unequal distribution of wealth inevitably leads to violence. As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the worlds problems or, for that matter, to any problems, he wrote. Denying this was simple populism, he called for action beyond a simple welfare mentality and added: I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor.... Stressing cooperation among religions, Francis quoted the late Pope John Paul IIs idea that the papacy might be reshaped to promote closer ties with other Christian churches and noted lessons Rome could learn from the Orthodox such as synodality or decentralized leadership. He praised cooperation with Jews and Muslims and urged Islamic countries to guarantee their Christian minorities the same religious freedom as Muslims enjoy in the West. huffingtonpost/2013/11/26/pope-francis-evangelii-gaudium_n_4342964.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 01:40:01 +0000
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