PARTICIPATION AT THE SECOND WORLD MEETING OF POPULAR MOVEMENTS
ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER
Expo Feria Exhibition Centre, Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia)
Thursday, 9 July 2015
Dear brothers and sisters, good afternoon!
Several months ago, we met in Rome, and I remember that
first meeting. In the meantime I have kept you in my thoughts and
prayers. I am happy to see you again, here, as you discuss the best ways
to overcome the grave situations of injustice experienced by the
excluded throughout our world. Thank you, President Evo Morales, for
your efforts to make this meeting possible.
During our first meeting in Rome, I sensed something
very beautiful: fraternity, determination, commitment, a thirst for
justice. Today, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, I sense it once again. I
thank you for that. I also know, from the Pontifical Council for Justice
and Peace headed by Cardinal Turkson, that many people in the Church
feel very close to the popular movements. That makes me very happy! I am
pleased to see the Church opening her doors to all of you, embracing
you, accompanying you and establishing in each diocese, in every justice
and peace commission, a genuine, ongoing and serious cooperation with
popular movements. I ask everyone, bishops, priests and laity, as well
as the social organizations of the urban and rural peripheries, to
deepen this encounter.
Today God has granted that we meet again. The Bible
tells us that God hears the cry of his people, and I wish to join my
voice to yours in calling for the three “L’s” for all our brothers and
sisters: land, lodging and labor. I said it and I repeat it: these are
sacred rights. It is important, it is well worth fighting for them. May
the cry of the excluded be heard in Latin America and throughout the
world.
1. Before all else, let us begin by acknowledging that
change is needed. Here I would clarify, lest there be any
misunderstanding, that I am speaking about problems common to all Latin
Americans and, more generally, to humanity as a whole. They are global
problems which today no one state can resolve on its own. With this
clarification, I now propose that we ask the following questions:
Do we truly realize that something is wrong in a world
where there are so many farmworkers without land, so many families
without a home, so many laborers without rights, so many persons whose
dignity is not respected?
Do we realize that something is wrong where so many
senseless wars are being fought and acts of fratricidal violence are
taking place on our very doorstep? Do we realize something is wrong when
the soil, water, air and living creatures of our world are under
constant threat?
So, if we do realize all this, let’s not be afraid to say it: we need change; we want change.
In your letters and in our meetings, you have mentioned
the many forms of exclusion and injustice which you experience in the
workplace, in neighborhoods and throughout the land. They are many and
diverse, just as many and diverse are the ways in which you confront
them. Yet there is an invisible thread joining every one of the forms of
exclusion. These are not isolated issues. Can we recognize that
invisible thread which links them? I wonder whether we can see that
those destructive realities are part of a system which has become
global. Do we realize that that system has imposed the mentality of
profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the
destruction of nature?
If such is the case, I would insist, let us not be
afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change. This
system is by now intolerable: farmworkers find it intolerable, laborers
find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it
intolerable … The earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint
Francis would say – also finds it intolerable.
We want change in our lives, in our neighborhoods, in
our everyday reality. We want a change which can affect the entire
world, since global interdependence calls for global answers to local
problems. The globalization of hope, a hope which springs up from
peoples and takes root among the poor, must replace the globalization of
exclusion and indifference!
Today I wish to reflect with you on the change we want
and need. You know that recently I wrote about the problems of climate
change. But now I would like to speak of change in another sense.
Positive change, a change which is good for us, a change – we can say –
which is redemptive. Because we need it. I know that you are looking for
change, and not just you alone: in my different meetings, in my
different travels, I have sensed an expectation, a longing, a yearning
for change, in people throughout the world. Even within that ever
smaller minority which believes that the present system is beneficial,
there is a widespread sense of dissatisfaction and even despondency.
Many people are hoping for a change capable of releasing them from the
bondage of individualism and the despondency it spawns.
Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out;
we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our
common home. Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have
long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the
ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being
brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there
is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea – one of the first theologians
of the Church – called “the dung of the devil”. An unfettered pursuit of
money rules. This is the “dung of the devil”. The service of the common
good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s
decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic
system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it
destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we
clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home, sister and mother
earth.
I do not need to go on describing the evil effects of
this subtle dictatorship: you are well aware of them. Nor is it enough
to point to the structural causes of today’s social and environmental
crisis. We are suffering from an excess of diagnosis, which at times
leads us to multiply words and to revel in pessimism and negativity.
Looking at the daily news we think that there is nothing to be done,
except to take care of ourselves and the little circle of our family and
friends.
What can I do, as collector of paper, old clothes or
used metal, a recycler, about all these problems if I barely make enough
money to put food on the table? What can I do as a craftsman, a street
vendor, a trucker, a downtrodden worker, if I don’t even enjoy workers’
rights? What can I do, a farmwife, a native woman, a fisher who can
hardly fight the domination of the big corporations? What can I do from
my little home, my shanty, my hamlet, my settlement, when I daily meet
with discrimination and marginalization? What can be done by those
students, those young people, those activists, those missionaries who
come to a neighborhood with their hearts full of hopes and dreams, but
without any real solution for their problems? They can do a lot. They
really can. You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged,
can do, and are doing, a lot. I would even say that the future of
humanity is in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to
organize and carry out creative alternatives, through your daily efforts
to ensure the three “L’s” – do you agree? – (labor, lodging, land) and
through your proactive participation in the great processes of change on
the national, regional and global levels. Don’t lose heart!
2. Secondly, you are sowers of change. Here in Bolivia I
have heard a phrase which I like: “process of change”. Change seen not
as something which will one day result from any one political decision
or change in social structure. We know from painful experience that
changes of structure which are not accompanied by a sincere conversion
of mind and heart sooner or later end up in bureaucratization,
corruption and failure. There must be a change of heart. That is why I
like the image of a “process”, processes, where the drive to sow, to
water seeds which others will see sprout, replaces the ambition to
occupy every available position of power and to see immediate results.
The option is to bring about processes and not to occupy positions. Each
of us is just one part of a complex and differentiated whole,
interacting in time: peoples who struggle to find meaning, a destiny,
and to live with dignity, to “live well”, and in that sense, worthily.
As members of popular movements, you carry out your work
inspired by fraternal love, which you show in opposing social
injustice. When we look into the eyes of the suffering, when we see the
faces of the endangered campesino, the poor laborer, the downtrodden
native, the homeless family, the persecuted migrant, the unemployed
young person, the exploited child, the mother who lost her child in a
shootout because the barrio was occupied by drugdealers, the father who
lost his daughter to enslavement…. when we think of all those names and
faces, our hearts break because of so much sorrow and pain. And we are
deeply moved, all of us…. We are moved because “we have seen and heard”
not a cold statistic but the pain of a suffering humanity, our own pain,
our own flesh. This is something quite different than abstract
theorizing or eloquent indignation. It moves us; it makes us attentive
to others in an effort to move forward together. That emotion which
turns into community action is not something which can be understood by
reason alone: it has a surplus of meaning which only peoples understand,
and it gives a special feel to genuine popular movements.
Each day you are caught up in the storms of people’s
lives. You have told me about their causes, you have shared your own
struggles with me, ever since I was in Buenos Aires, and I thank you for
that. You, dear brothers and sisters, often work on little things, in
local situations, amid forms of injustice which you do not simply accept
but actively resist, standing up to an idolatrous system which
excludes, debases and kills. I have seen you work tirelessly for the
soil and crops of campesinos, for their lands and communities, for a
more dignified local economy, for the urbanization of their homes and
settlements; you have helped them build their own homes and develop
neighborhood infrastructures. You have also promoted any number of
community activities aimed at reaffirming so elementary and undeniably
necessary a right as that of the three “L’s”: land, lodging and labor.
This rootedness in the barrio, the land, the office, the
labor union, this ability to see yourselves in the faces of others,
this daily proximity to their share of troubles – because they exist and
we all have them – and their little acts of heroism: this is what
enables you to practice the commandment of love, not on the basis of
ideas or concepts, but rather on the basis of genuine interpersonal
encounter. We need to build up this culture of encounter. We do not love
concepts or ideas; no one loves a concept or an idea. We love people...
Commitment, true commitment, is born of the love of men and women, of
children and the elderly, of peoples and communities… of names and faces
which fill our hearts. From those seeds of hope patiently sown in the
forgotten fringes of our planet, from those seedlings of a tenderness
which struggles to grow amid the shadows of exclusion, great trees will
spring up, great groves of hope to give oxygen to our world.
So I am pleased to see that you are working at close
hand to care for those seedlings, but at the same time, with a broader
perspective, to protect the entire forest. Your work is carried out
against a horizon which, while concentrating on your own specific area,
also aims to resolve at their root the more general problems of poverty,
inequality and exclusion.
I congratulate you on this. It is essential that, along
with the defense of their legitimate rights, peoples and their social
organizations be able to construct a humane alternative to a
globalization which excludes. You are sowers of change. May God grant
you the courage, joy, perseverance and passion to continue sowing. Be
assured that sooner or later we will see its fruits. Of the leadership I
ask this: be creative and never stop being rooted in local realities,
since the father of lies is able to usurp noble words, to promote
intellectual fads and to adopt ideological stances. But if you build on
solid foundations, on real needs and on the lived experience of your
brothers and sisters, of campesinos and natives, of excluded workers and
marginalized families, you will surely be on the right path.
The Church cannot and must not remain aloof from this
process in her proclamation of the Gospel. Many priests and pastoral
workers carry out an enormous work of accompanying and promoting the
excluded throughout the world, alongside cooperatives, favouring
businesses, providing housing, working generously in the fields of
health, sports and education. I am convinced that respectful cooperation
with the popular movements can revitalize these efforts and strengthen
processes of change.
Let us always have at heart the Virgin Mary, a humble
girl from small people lost on the fringes of a great empire, a homeless
mother who could turn a stable for beasts into a home for Jesus with
just a few swaddling clothes and much tenderness. Mary is a sign of hope
for peoples suffering the birth pangs of justice. I pray that Our Lady
of Mount Carmel, patroness of Bolivia, will allow this meeting of ours
to be a leaven of change.
3. Third and lastly, I would like us all to consider
some important tasks for the present historical moment, since we desire a
positive change for the benefit of all our brothers and sisters. We
know this. We desire change enriched by the collaboration of
governments, popular movements and other social forces. This too we
know. But it is not so easy to define the content of change – in other
words, a social program which can embody this project of fraternity and
justice which we are seeking. It is not easy to define it. So don’t
expect a recipe from this Pope. Neither the Pope nor the Church have a
monopoly on the interpretation of social reality or the proposal of
solutions to contemporary issues. I dare say that no recipe exists.
History is made by each generation as it follows in the footsteps of
those preceding it, as it seeks its own path and respects the values
which God has placed in the human heart.
I would like, all the same, to propose three great tasks which demand a decisive and shared contribution from popular movements:
3.1 The first task is to put the economy at the service
of peoples. Human beings and nature must not be at the service of money.
Let us say NO to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money
rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes.
That economy destroys Mother Earth.
The economy should not be a mechanism for accumulating
goods, but rather the proper administration of our common home. This
entails a commitment to care for that home and to the fitting
distribution of its goods among all. It is not only about ensuring a
supply of food or “decent sustenance”. Nor, although this is already a
great step forward, is it to guarantee the three “L’s” of land, lodging
and labor for which you are working. A truly communitarian economy, one
might say an economy of Christian inspiration, must ensure peoples’
dignity and their “general, temporal welfare and prosperity”.
[1]
(Pope John XXIII spoke this last phrase fifty years ago, and Jesus says
in the Gospel that whoever freely offers a glass of water to one who is
thirsty will be remembered in the Kingdom of Heaven.) All of this
includes the three “L’s”, but also
access to education, health care, new
technologies, artistic and cultural manifestations, communications,
sports and recreation. A just economy must create the conditions for
everyone to be able to enjoy a childhood without want, to develop their
talents when young, to work with full rights during their active years
and to enjoy a dignified retirement as they grow older. It is an economy
where human beings, in harmony with nature, structure the entire system
of production and distribution in such a way that the abilities and
needs of each individual find suitable expression in social life. You,
and other peoples as well, sum up this desire in a simple and beautiful
expression: “to live well”, which is not the same as “to have a good
time”.
Such an economy is not only desirable and necessary, but
also possible. It is no utopia or chimera. It is an extremely realistic
prospect. We can achieve it. The available resources in our world, the
fruit of the intergenerational labors of peoples and the gifts of
creation, more than suffice for the integral development of “each man
and the whole man”.[2]
The problem is of another kind. There exists a system with different
aims. A system which, in addition to irresponsibly accelerating the pace
of production, and using industrial and agricultural methods which
damage Mother Earth in the name of “productivity”, continues to deny
many millions of our brothers and sisters their most elementary
economic, social and cultural rights. This system runs counter to the
plan of Jesus, against the Good News that Jesus brought.
Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the
earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral
obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a
commandment. It is about giving to the poor and to peoples what is
theirs by right. The universal destination of goods is not a figure of
speech found in the Church’s social teaching. It is a reality prior to
private property. Property, especially when it affects natural
resources, must always serve the needs of peoples. And those needs are
not restricted to consumption. It is not enough to let a few drops fall
whenever the poor shake a cup which never runs over by itself. Welfare
programs geared to certain emergencies can only be considered temporary
and incidental responses. They could never replace true inclusion, an
inclusion which provides worthy, free, creative, participatory and
solidary work.
Along this path, popular movements play an essential
role, not only by making demands and lodging protests, but even more
basically by being creative. You are social poets: creators of work,
builders of housing, producers of food, above all for people left behind
by the world market.
I have seen first hand a variety of experiences where
workers united in cooperatives and other forms of community organization
were able to create work where there were only crumbs of an idolatrous
economy. I have seen some of you here. Recuperated businesses, local
fairs and cooperatives of paper collectors are examples of that popular
economy which is born of exclusion and which, slowly, patiently and
resolutely adopts solidary forms which dignify it. How different this is
than the situation which results when those left behind by the formal
market are exploited like slaves!
Governments which make it their responsibility to put
the economy at the service of peoples must promote the strengthening,
improvement, coordination and expansion of these forms of popular
economy and communitarian production. This entails bettering the
processes of work, providing adequate infrastructures and guaranteeing
workers their full rights in this alternative sector. When the state and
social organizations join in working for the three “L’s”, the
principles of solidarity and subsidiarity come into play; and these
allow the common good to be achieved in a full and participatory
democracy.
3.2. The second task is to unite our peoples on the path of peace and justice.
The world’s peoples want to be artisans of their own
destiny. They want to advance peacefully towards justice. They do not
want forms of tutelage or interference by which those with greater power
subordinate those with less. They want their culture, their language,
their social processes and their religious traditions to be respected.
No actual or established power has the right to deprive peoples of the
full exercise of their sovereignty. Whenever they do so, we see the rise
of new forms of colonialism which seriously prejudice the possibility
of peace and justice. For “peace is founded not only on respect for
human rights but also on respect for the rights of peoples, in
particular the right to independence”.
[3]
The peoples of Latin America fought to gain their
political independence and for almost two centuries their history has
been dramatic and filled with contradictions, as they have striven to
achieve full independence.
In recent years, after any number of misunderstandings,
many Latin American countries have seen the growth of fraternity between
their peoples. The governments of the region have pooled forces in
order to ensure respect for the sovereignty of their own countries and
the entire region, which our forebears so beautifully called the
“greater country”. I ask you, my brothers and sisters of the popular
movements, to foster and increase this unity. It is necessary to
maintain unity in the face of every effort to divide, if the region is
to grow in peace and justice.
Despite the progress made, there are factors which still
threaten this equitable human development and restrict the sovereignty
of the countries of the “greater country” and other areas of our planet.
The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as
the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain
“free trade” treaties, and the imposition of measures of “austerity”
which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor. We, the bishops
of Latin America, denounce this with utter clarity in the Aparecida
Document, stating that “financial institutions and transnational
companies are becoming stronger to the point that local economies are
subordinated, especially weakening the local states, which seem ever
more powerless to carry out development projects in the service of their
populations”.
[4]
At other times, under the noble guise of battling corruption, the
narcotics trade and terrorism – grave evils of our time which call for
coordinated international action – we see states being saddled with
measures which have little to do with the resolution of these problems
and which not infrequently worsen matters.
Similarly,
the monopolizing of the communications media,
which would impose alienating examples of consumerism and a certain
cultural uniformity, is another one of the forms taken by the new
colonialism. It is ideological colonialism. As the African bishops have
observed, poor countries are often treated like “parts of a machine,
cogs on a gigantic wheel”.
[5]
It must be acknowledged that none of the grave problems
of humanity can be resolved without interaction between states and
peoples at the international level. Every significant action carried out
in one part of the planet has universal, ecological, social and
cultural repercussions. Even crime and violence have become globalized.
Consequently, no government can act independently of a common
responsibility. If we truly desire positive change, we have to humbly
accept our interdependence, that is to say, our healthy interdependence.
Interaction, however, is not the same as imposition; it is not the
subordination of some to serve the interests of others. Colonialism,
both old and new, which reduces poor countries to mere providers of raw
material and cheap labor, engenders violence, poverty, forced migrations
and all the evils which go hand in hand with these, precisely because,
by placing the periphery at the service of the center, it denies those
countries the right to an integral development. That is inequality,
brothers and sisters, and inequality generates a violence which no
police, military, or intelligence resources can control.
Let us say NO, then, to forms of colonialism old and
new. Let us say YES to the encounter between peoples and cultures.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Here I wish to bring up an important issue. Some may
rightly say, “When the Pope speaks of colonialism, he overlooks certain
actions of the Church”. I say this to you with regret: many grave sins
were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God.
My predecessors acknowledged this, CELAM, the Council of Latin American
Bishops, has said it, and I too wish to say it. Like Saint John Paul
II, I ask that the Church – I repeat what he said – “kneel before God
and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and
daughters”.
[6]
I would also say, and here I wish to be quite clear, as was Saint John
Paul II: I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the
Church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples
during the so-called conquest of America. Together with this request
for forgiveness and in order to be just,
I also would like us to
remember the thousands of priests and bishops who strongly opposed the
logic of the sword with the power of the Cross. There was sin, a great
deal of it, for which we did not ask pardon. So for this, we ask
forgiveness, I ask forgiveness. But here also, where there was sin,
great sin, grace abounded through the men and women who defended the
rights of indigenous peoples.
I also ask everyone, believers and nonbelievers alike,
to think of those many bishops, priests and laity who preached and
continue to preach the Good News of Jesus with courage and meekness,
respectfully and pacifically – though I said bishops, priests and laity,
I do not wish to forget the religious sisters who have been so present
to our poor neighborhoods, bringing a message of peace and wellbeing – ;
who left behind them impressive works of human promotion and of love,
often standing alongside the native peoples or accompanying their
popular movements even to the point of martyrdom. The Church, her sons
and daughters, are part of the identity of the peoples of Latin America.
An identity which here, as in other countries, some powers are
committed to erasing, at times because our faith is revolutionary,
because our faith challenges the tyranny of mammon. Today we are
dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many
of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for
their faith in Jesus. This too needs to be denounced: in this third
world war, waged peacemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of
genocide – I insist on the word – is taking place, and it must end.
To our brothers and sisters in the Latin American
indigenous movement, allow me to express my deep affection and
appreciation of their efforts to bring peoples and cultures together – a
coming together of peoples and cultures - in a form of coexistence
which I like to call polyhedric, where each group preserves its own
identity by building together a plurality which does not threaten but
rather reinforces unity. Your quest for an interculturalism, which
combines the defense of the rights of the native peoples with respect
for the territorial integrity of states, is for all of us a source of
enrichment and encouragement.
3.3. The third task, perhaps the most important facing us today, is to defend Mother Earth.
Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed
with impunity. Cowardice in defending it is a grave sin. We see with
growing disappointment how one international summit after another takes
place without any significant result. There exists a clear, definite and
pressing ethical imperative to implement what has not yet been done. We
cannot allow certain interests – interests which are global but not
universal – to take over, to dominate states and international
organizations, and to continue destroying creation. People and their
movements are called to cry out, to mobilize and to demand – peacefully,
but firmly – that appropriate and urgently-needed measures be taken. I
ask you, in the name of God, to defend Mother Earth. I have duly
addressed this issue in my Encyclical Letter
Laudato Si’, which I believe will be distributed at the end.
4. In conclusion, I would like to repeat: the future of
humanity does not lie solely in the hands of great leaders, the great
powers and the elites. It is fundamentally in the hands of peoples and
in their ability to organize. It is in their hands, which can guide with
humility and conviction this process of change. I am with you. Each of
us, let repeat from the heart: no family without lodging, no rural
worker without land, no laborer without rights, no people without
sovereignty, no individual without dignity, no child without childhood,
no young person without a future, no elderly person without a venerable
old age. Keep up your struggle and, please, take great care of Mother
Earth. Believe me; I am sincere when I say from the heart that I pray
for you and with you, and I ask God our Father to accompany you and to
bless you, to fill you with his love and defend you on your way by
granting you in abundance that strength which keeps us on our feet: that
strength is hope. It is something important: hope does not disappoint. I
ask you, please, to pray for me. If some of you are unable to pray,
with all respect, I ask you to send me your good thoughts and energy.
Thank you.
[4] FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN BISHOPS,
Aparecida Document (29 June 2007), 66.
[6] Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000
Incarnationis Mysterium (29 November 1998),11: AAS 91 (1999), 139-141.
