2023-09-20 05:17:00
From the beginning of his pontificate and especially following the publication of the Encyclical “Laudato si”, Some political sectors and several journalists try to frame the figure of Pope Francis with ideologies and party currents.. However, the centrality of the theme of social justice in Francis’ speeches cannot be extrapolated from the contents of the Social Doctrine of the Church and From this derive the continuous references to human dignity, aid to refugees and care for the earth understood as total human ecology.
These issues are not new, already in 2009 the then Cardinal Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires and president of the Argentine Episcopate, explained that the fundamental principle of the Social Doctrine of the Church is the inviolable dignity of the person in which we all participate, since all men and women are children of God. From this derives another principle that guides human activity: Man is the subject, beginning and end of all political, economic and social activity.
In this regard, Bergoglio highlighted that according to the Second Vatican Council “the excessive economic and social inequalities that occur between members of our society, in our people, are contrary to social justice, equity, and the dignity of the human person. and to social and international peace.” The preferential option for the poor, regarding which the Council had once once more raised awareness, in Medellín, at the meeting of Latin American bishops post-Vatican II, gained fundamental vigor.
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On that occasion there was talk of the preferential option for the poor to escape poverty with them, fighting once morest injustice. This is because, as Monsignor Eduardo Pironio, Secretary of the Conference, explained, “when man becomes aware of the depth of his misery, a hunger and thirst for true justice awakens in him, which prepares him for the blessedness of those who must be satisfied.”
Pope Bergoglio is nourished by this church, who at the World Youth Day held in Brazil in 2013 declared that his program is the Beatitudes and Matthew 25. In this way To each criticism received we might respond with the beautiful words that the Sermon on the Mount bequeaths us:
– The candidates of the American Republican Party and the Fox Network called him a Marxist for the criticisms made of the capitalist system that he made first in the exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” and then in the encyclical “Laudato si”, denouncing social disparities, exploitation and exclusion of the poorest that this system entails (Blessed are the poor because theirs will be the kingdom of heaven).
– Political scientist Giovanni Sartori blamed him for dealing with issues that do not concern the Church for having urged not to reject migrants and refugees. (Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy).
– Journalist Antonio Socci, joining Sartori’s criticism, accused Francis of remaining silent regarding the massacres of Christians. Despite this, it is known that on August 9, 2014, Pope Francis sent a letter to the Secretary General of the UN, precisely asking for security and humanitarian aid for Christians persecuted by the Islamic State militias in Iraq. Furthermore, the Holy Father has recalled the tragedy of persecuted Christians in all his messages and during all the most important celebrations that have taken place in the Vatican. (Blessed are you when, because of me, people insult you and say all kinds of slander once morest you, be glad and rejoice, because your reward will be great in heaven.).
– Sandro Magister of L’Espresso accuses him of being populist for his speech to the Popular Movements in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in Bolivia, where he said that everyone has the right to have “Roof, Land and Work” and that the future of the humanity “is fundamentally in the hands of the people” (Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied).
– And finally, the prestigious magazine The Economist called him a Peronist for his decision to visit Cuba before the United States and his choice to visit Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, the three countries with a large Amerindian population, describing all these gestures as proof of his dream of building the Great Homeland. (Blessed are those who work for peace, for they will be called children of God).
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It is useless to remember that the concept of “people” to which Pope Francis refers and in particular the concept of “People of God” does not derive either from populism or from any current of Peronism. On the contrary, as the Argentine theologian Juan Carlos Scannone SJ explains, that was a “notion already used by the Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium.”
What many intellectuals seem to ignore is that the doctrinal postulates of Peronism draw explicitly on the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church, for example, from social encyclicals such as the Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII (1891), and the Quadragesimus Annus of Pius XI (1931).
The holy father’s message transcends any political movement. It is regarding putting man back at the center of the political and that not so much as a “citizen” or as an “economic subject” but as a “person endowed with a transcendent dignity” as he requested during his visit to the Parliament of Strasbourg, on December 25. November 2014.
“Pope Francis brings charity to politics,” Professor Alfredo Luciani, founder of the International Association of Missionaries of Political Charity, told me. In this sense, charity should not be understood as compassion or assistance, but as a form of “social love.” A feeling similar to that which united the first Christians of the Jerusalem Community where the apostles lived in fraternal communion, sharing everything, in the same unity that constitutes the body of Christ.
It is difficult to understand the challenge that the Pope throws at us, in a global society marked by technological advances and inequalities. To understand Pope Francis, it is best to simplify. He himself said in Paraguay, during his pastoral visit on July 5, 2015: “the Gospel gives us the keys to face current challenges.” The Pope is not a Marxist, nor a Populist, nor a Peronist, he is a Christian in the deepest sense and carries forward the word of Christ and the conduct of Saint Francis of Assisi..
* Eduardo Valdés, National Deputy
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