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The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor. I exhort you to generous solidarity and to the return of economics and finance to an ethical approach which favors human beings鈥�.
Our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society鈥檚 most neglected members.
Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society. This demands that we be docile and attentive to the cry of the poor and to come to their aid鈥�.
The Church has realized that the need to heed this plea is itself born of the liberating action of grace within each of us, and thus it is not a question of a mission reserved only to a few鈥t means working to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and to promote the integral development of the poor, as well as small daily acts of solidarity in meeting the real needs which we encounter. The word 鈥渟olidarity鈥� is a little worn and at times poorly understood, but it refers to something more than a few sporadic acts of generosity. It presumes the creation of a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all over the appropriation of goods by a few鈥�.
We are not simply talking about ensuring nourishment or a 鈥渄ignified sustenance鈥� for all people, but also their 鈥済eneral temporal welfare and prosperity.鈥漑1] This means education, access to health care, and above all employment, for it is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labor that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives. A just wage enables them to have adequate access to all the other goods which are destined for our common use鈥�.
For the Church, the option for the poor is primarily a theological category rather than a cultural, sociological, political or philosophical one. God shows the poor 鈥渉is first mercy.鈥漑2] This divine preference has consequences for the faith life of all Christians, since we are called to have 鈥渢his mind鈥� which was in Jesus Christ鈥� (Phil 2:5). Inspired by this, the Church has made an option for the poor which is understood as a 鈥渟pecial form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness.鈥漑3] This option 鈥� as Benedict XVI has taught 鈥� 鈥渋s implicit in our Christian faith in a God who became poor for us, so as to enrich us with his poverty.鈥漑4] This is why I want a Church which is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the centre of the Church鈥檚 pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them.
Our commitment does not consist exclusively in activities or programs of promotion and assistance; what the Holy Spirit mobilizes is not an unruly activism, but above all an attentiveness which considers the other 鈥渋n a certain sense as one with ourselves.鈥漑5] This loving attentiveness is the beginning of a true concern for their person which inspires me effectively to seek their good. This entails appreciating the poor in their goodness, in their experience of life, in their culture, and in their ways of living the faith鈥�. The poor person, when loved, 鈥渋s esteemed as of great value,鈥漑6] and this is what makes the authentic option for the poor differ from any other ideology, from any attempt to exploit the poor for one鈥檚 own personal or political interest. Only on the basis of this real and sincere closeness can we properly accompany the poor on their path of liberation. Only this will ensure that 鈥渋n every Christian community the poor feel at home. Would not this approach be the greatest and most effective presentation of the good news of the kingdom?鈥漑7] Without the preferential option for the poor, 鈥渢he proclamation of the Gospel, which is itself the prime form of charity, risks being misunderstood or submerged by the ocean of words which daily engulfs us in today鈥檚 society of mass communications.鈥漑8]鈥�
The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed, not only for the pragmatic reason of its urgency for the good order of society, but because society needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it, and which can only lead to new crises. Welfare projects, which meet certain urgent needs, should be considered merely temporary responses. 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,[9] no solution will be found for the world鈥檚 problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.
The dignity of each human person and the pursuit of the common good are concerns which ought to shape all economic policies. At times, however, they seem to be a mere addendum imported from without in order to fill out a political discourse lacking in perspectives or plans for true and integral development. How many words prove irksome to this system! It is irksome when the question of ethics is raised, when global solidarity is invoked, when the distribution of goods is mentioned, when reference is made to protecting labor and defending the dignity of the powerless, when allusion is made to a God who demands a commitment to justice. At other times these issues are exploited by a rhetoric which cheapens them. Casual indifference in the face of such questions empties our lives and our words of all meaning. Business is a vocation, and a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life; this will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all.
We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market. Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it requires decisions, programs, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality鈥�
Jesus, the evangelizer par excellence and the Gospel in person, identifies especially with the little ones (cf. Mt 25:40). This reminds us Christians that we are called to care for the vulnerable of the earth. But the current model, with its emphasis on success and self-reliance, does not appear to favor an investment in efforts to help the slow, the weak or the less talented to find opportunities in life.
It is essential to draw near to new forms of poverty and vulnerability, in which we are called to recognize the suffering Christ, even if this appears to bring us no tangible and immediate benefits. I think of the homeless, the addicted, refugees, indigenous peoples, the elderly who are increasingly isolated and abandoned, and many others鈥�.
There are other weak and defenseless beings who are frequently at the mercy of economic interests or indiscriminate exploitation. I am speaking of creation as a whole. We human beings are not only the beneficiaries but also the stewards of other creatures. Thanks to our bodies, God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement. Let us not leave in our wake a swath of destruction and death which will affect our own lives and those of future generations.[10]鈥�
Small yet strong in the love of God, like Saint Francis of Assisi, all of us, as Christians, are called to watch over and protect the fragile world in which we live, and all its peoples.
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Selection from Pope Francis鈥檚 2013 Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), Nos. 58, 186-216. Reprinted with Permission. For full text, visit www.vatican.va
1Paul VI, Populorum Progressio 65.
2John Paul II, 鈥淗omily at Mass for the Evangelization of Peoples in Santo Domingo鈥� (11 Oct. 1984), 5: AAS 77 (1985), 358.
3John Paul II, Solllicitudo Rei Socialis, 42.
4鈥淎ddress at the Inaugural Session of the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops鈥� (13 May 007), 3: AAS 99 (2007), 450.
5Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II.27.2.
6Ibid., I-II.26.3.
7John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 50.
8Ibid.
9This implies a commitment to 鈥渆liminate the structural cases of global economic dysfunction,鈥� Benedict XVI, Address to the Diplomatic Corps (8 Jan. 2007): AAS 99 (2007), 73.
10Cf. Proposito 56.