Pope Francis encouraged the leaders of the popular movements to stand up to “the dehumanization” that is spreading in today’s world and to fight against injustice wherever it rears its ugly head in a passionate talk on social justice this morning, Sept. 20. “It is often precisely the wealthiest who oppose the realization of social justice or integral ecology out of sheer greed,” he said.
The pope traveled from the Vatican to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in the Palazzo San Calisto in Trastevere to give this talk. He was welcomed on arrival by Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., the prefect of the dicastery, and Juan Grabois, the coordinator of the movements, who is a member of the dicastery and a former presidential candidate in Argentina, where he traveled from for the occasion.
Pope Francis’ previous three talks to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, and especially his talk at Santa Cruz during his visit to Bolivia, were stirring calls to action and sometimes expressed a development of the church’s social teaching. Today’s 45-minute talk was no different and is sure to spark discussion.
Francis, speaking in Spanish, began by recalling their first meeting in October 2014 in the Vatican, which brought together representatives of these grassroots movements and organizations from 80 countries, representing millions of poor people worldwide. On that occasion, he said, “We planted a flag: land, shelter and work”—in Spanish, they are the three “Ts”: “tierra, techo y trabajo”—which he called “sacred rights.”
There were about 30 representatives from the popular movements in the room as he spoke, but many others were connected by streaming worldwide, and speakers from Sri Lanka and South Africa spoke to the group via Zoom.
Francis began with words of encouragement: “Your mission is transcendent. If the poor people do not resign themselves, [if they] organize, persevere in daily community building and at the same time fight against the structures of social injustice, sooner or later, things will change for the better.”
He praised them for not giving into “passivity and pessimism” but opting to be “protagonists of history” and working together “body to body,” doing concrete works, to improve the local situation, often without help from the state and sometimes while facing persecution.
“I continue to believe, as I told you in Bolivia, that not only your own future but perhaps that of all humanity depends on the community action of the poor of the earth,” the pope said.
He said that “the poor are at the center of the Gospel” and that “it is not the pope but Jesus who puts them in that place. It is a matter of our faith that cannot be negotiated.”
“We all depend on the poor, all of us, including the rich,” he said. He recalled that at the beginning of his pontificate, he had said: “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 world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.” He added, “I know it bothers [people when I say that], but it is the truth.”
Francis added today, “If there are no policies, good policies, rational and equitable policies that strengthen social justice so that everyone has land, shelter, work, a fair salary and adequate social rights, the logic of material waste and human waste will spread, leaving violence and desolation in its wake.”
Greed of the rich
“Sadly, it is often precisely the wealthiest who oppose the realization of social justice or integral ecology out of sheer greed,” the Argentine pope said. They pressure governments “to sustain bad policies that favor them economically.” He repeated what he has often said: “The devil enters through the pocket.”
He noted that “some of the richest men in the world recognize that the system that allowed them to amass extraordinary fortunes—allow me to say, ridiculous [fortunes]—is immoral and must be modified” and “that there should be more taxes on billionaires.”
“If that small percentage of billionaires who monopolize most of the planet’s wealth were encouraged to share it...how good it would be for themselves and how fair it would be for everyone,” the pope said. “I sincerely ask the privileged of this world to be encouraged to take this step. They’re going to be much happier.”
He emphasized that “the poor cannot wait” and said, “If the popular movements do not demand, if you do not shout, if you do not fight, if you do not awaken consciences, things are going to be more difficult.”
Francis, who has sometimes been criticized for not speaking about the middle class, said “Middle class people, too, have to sacrifice more and more to make ends meet.” They have “to pay very high rents,” “cannot save” and “perhaps leave their children in a worse situation than the one they received.”
“Blind competition for more and more money is not a creative force, but an unhealthy attitude and a path to perdition,” the pope said. “Such irresponsible, immoral and irrational behavior is destroying creation and dividing peoples.” He called on the popular movements to “not stop denouncing it.”
Social justice vs. winner’s culture
“Social justice is inseparable from compassion,” Francis insisted. He explained, “Compassion means suffering with the other, sharing their feelings…making ourselves close to one another.” He added, “True compassion builds the unity of people.”
“Dehumanized ideologies promote the ‘culture of the winner,’ which is an aspect of the ‘throwaway culture,” the pope said. He added, “Some call this ‘meritocracy,’ others do not name it but practice it.” But, he said, “It is paradoxical that many times great fortunes have little to do with merit: They are [the result of] income or inheritances, they are the result of the exploitation of people and plundering of nature, they are the product of financial speculation or tax evasion, they derive from corruption or organized crime.”
The Jesuit pope said the opposite of compassion is “to look down on others as if they were worthless.” He said: “It is the great temptation of our time. To look from afar, to look from above, to look with indifference, to look with contempt, to look with hatred.” Significantly, he added, “This is how violence is conceived: the silence of indifference enables the roar of hatred. Silence in the face of injustice gives way to social division, social division to verbal violence, verbal violence to physical violence, physical violence to the war of all against all.”
“Social justice, including integral ecology, can only be understood on the basis of love,” Pope Francis said. “Let us not forget that ‘without love we are nothing.’”
‘Crocodiles’ of colonialism
He told the popular movements, “Let no one steal our historical memory and the sense of belonging to a people.” He recalled that during his visit to Timor-Leste, he warned people about “certain crocodiles who want to change their culture, bite their history and make them forget what they are.” Indeed, he said, “material colonialism and ideological colonialism always go together, devouring the material and immaterial wealth of peoples.” He noted that “there are interests that are global but not universal,” which “seek to standardize and subdue everything.” He warned them: “Crocodiles come camouflaged. Be careful, but don’t be afraid.”
In a statement that has relevance in many countries, including the United States, Francis said:
Cowardice leads many politicians to change their convictions for their convenience. They went through the taming of big media, the social networks, they were afraid and gave in. They then adopt servile positions in front of the economically powerful. To renounce noble and generous ideals in order to serve money or power is a great apostasy. It does not happen only with politicians, it happens with social and union leaders, with artists and intellectuals...and also with us, the priests.
Francis told leaders of the popular movements, “You have to help the politicians so that they don’t give themselves over to crocodiles, so that they don’t kneel before the golden statue for fear of the oven.” He added, “You have to be custodians of social justice” and “have to be there to remind them [the politicians] of who they are serving.”
He said they “should be like the widow in the Gospel, insisting, insisting, so that they do justice. That’s a tactic Jesus taught us. You will surely find others, but please, always within nonviolence, please always work for peace.”
‘Continue to fight the criminal economy with the popular economy’
Francis then focused on issues that make “common tasks between the church and the popular movements.”
First, he said, are the problems of “Drug trafficking, child prostitution, human trafficking, brutal violence in neighborhoods and all forms of organized crime,” crimes that are growing because “misery and exclusion” make them possible.
“They flourish when there is no socio-urban integration and the neighborhoods of the poor are left marginalized without water, sewers, electricity, heating, sidewalks, parks, community centers, clubs, parishes,” the pope said. “They grow when in rural territories there is not an adequate distribution of land, a balanced territorial planning, constant support for family farming and respect for the rural family.”
“We have to attack these structural causes,” Francis said. He urged the popular movements also to “confront them indirectly” and said, “The grassroots work that you and so many people in the church do is often the last barrier of containment.”
His second major concern regarded online gambling and the misuse of networks, which affect not only the poorest sectors of society but all social classes. “It makes me so sad to see football matches and sports stars promoting betting platforms,” he said. “That’s not a game; it’s an addiction.” He said it is taking money from people, especially the workers and the poor, and that it “destroys entire families.”
He called on the popular movements to “expose the mental illness, despair and suicides caused by the fact that in every house there is a casino through the cell phone.”
Pope Francis appealed to the entrepreneurs of information technology, digital platforms, social networks and artificial intelligence “to stop the arrogance of believing that you are above the law” and “to be responsible for what happens on the platforms they control.”
He said they “have an obligation to prevent the spread of hatred, violence, fake news, extreme polarization and racism. They also have the obligation to prevent the networks from being used to disseminate gambling, child pornography or facilitate organized crime.” Moreover, he said, “They cannot plunder for their exclusive benefit the data provided by citizens or created by public entities without giving something back to the people,” including through taxes.
Universal basic wage
In his talk, Francis again endorsed the popular movements’ call for “a universal basic wage.” He reminded people that “all fortune is the product of the work of many people and many generations, of public investment in scientific knowledge and of the state development of infrastructure” as well as “the result of entrepreneurial ingenuity” and “also of the most humble mother of a family who raised the children of the workers.”
That is why, he said, “in addition to being necessary, it is only fair that the fruits of so much intergenerational and collective effort be distributed among all members of society.” He said, “This is a matter of strict justice.”
