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Audience with the Laudato Si ‘Communities – Ansa / Vatican media
“Our challenge today is not ‘how do we cope’, how do we get out of this reality; our real challenge is ‘what life will be like for the next generation’: we must think about this!” Quoting the martyr theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pope Francis renews the call to all to safeguard our common home. Reception of the Laudato Sì Communities, born from the idea of the Bishop of Rieti, Domenico Pompili, and Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food (two days ago in the Vatican for the presentation of the book ‘TerraFutura’, in which the Pope spoke and Petrini himself on these issues, ed), Francis underlines how “the neglect of creation and social injustices” influence each other: “It can be said – affirms the Pontiff – there is no ecology without equity and there is no equity without equity ecology “. After all, “the pandemic has also shown it: human health cannot be separated from that of the environment in which it lives.”
The safeguarding of our common home concerns everyone, “especially those responsible for nations and productive activities.” “Generic commitments are not enough – words, words … – and you cannot just look at the immediate consent of the voters or financiers. We must look far, otherwise history will not forgive. We need to work today for everyone’s tomorrow. the poor will hold us accountable. It is our challenge ”, Francis repeats, pointing out two key words of integral ecology: contemplation and compassion. Enough of that “indifference that enters the heart”, compassion “is the best vaccine against the epidemic of indifference.”
Francisco observes how today the nature that surrounds us is no longer admired, contemplated, but “devoured”. We have all “become voracious, dependent on profits and results immediately and at all costs.” “Sick of consumption. This is our disease! “, He says, specifying how the latest App worries us but” we no longer know the names of the neighbors, much less know how to distinguish one tree from another. which is more serious -he adds-, with this lifestyle the roots are lost, the gratitude for what exists and for those who gave it to us is lost ”. We must “not be distracted by a thousand useless things, we must find silence” and “free ourselves from cell phone imprisonment, to look into the eyes of those around us and the creation that has been given to us.” Here it is that contemplation “is the antidote to hasty, superficial and inconclusive choices.”
And the fruit of contemplation is compassion, which “is not saying: ‘this makes me sad …'”, but “suffering with”. Compassion is the opposite of indifference, “that indifference that enters the heart, the mentality, and ends with a ‘who gets by'”. compassion “is not pietism” but “creating a new bond with the other”. “The world needs this creative and effective charity, from people who do not stand in front of a screen to comment, but from people who get their hands dirty to remove degradation and regain dignity,” reiterates Bergoglio. “To have compassion is a choice: it is to choose not to have any enemy to see the neighbor in each one. And this is a choice,” he continues, underlining that “those who have compassion enter into a tough daily struggle against waste and waste. of others and waste of things ”, like the more than one billion tons of food that industrialized countries throw away every year, according to the FAO and that Francisco defines as“ scandalous ”.
“Let us help, together – is his last invitation -, to fight against waste and waste, we demand political options that combine progress and equity, development and sustainability for all, so that no one is deprived of the land they inhabit, of the good air that he breathes, water has the right to drink and food has the right to eat. ”
“Build universal brotherhood. And this is the moment, this is today’s challenge,” he concludes.
HERE THE FULL TEXT OF THE POPE’S SPEECH
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