The event will be marked by the Pope having lunch with around 1500 poor people in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, where the last Synod occurred.
In his message, Francis recalls that “the poor have a privileged place in God’s heart” and that “God is attentive to each one of them” (n.4). He therefore recommends: “Do not lose this certainty: he does not forget you, nor could he ever do so.” (n.6)
The Pope also highlights violence and the effects of wars on increasing poverty: “How many new poor people this evil policy of arms produces, how many innocent victims!” (4) And he adds: “We are poor in peace!”
Faced with this scenario, “we cannot pass by and look the other way. Indifference is an accomplice to injustice. And there is no more time for indifference,” the Pope appealed in his message to COP 29. He added: Selfishness – individual, national, and of power groups – feeds a climate of mistrust and division that does not respond to the needs of an interdependent world in which we should act and live as members of a single-family inhabiting the same interconnected global village.”
And his analysis of the current political and economic situation didn’t stop there:
“Economic development has not reduced inequalities. [On the contrary,” he said, ”it has favored the priority of profit and private interests over the protection of the weakest and has contributed to the progressive worsening of environmental problems.
A few days earlier, in a message sent to the “Pan-American Committee of Judges for Social Rights and Franciscan Doctrine”, the Pope said: “It is the state, not the market, that generates harmony and guarantees social justice”. And he urged the magistrates not to help “clean up the streets of the poor” but rather to “help ensure that there is no poverty”; instead, an “equitable and just distribution of wealth so that there are no more excluded people and everyone is part of the economic and social system in an equal and integrated way.”
In his message for the World Day of the Poor, Francis adds that this problem, which divides rich and poor countries, “has become a commitment on the agenda of every ecclesial community. It is a pastoral opportunity that must not be underestimated because it challenges every member of the faithful to listen to the prayers of the poor, becoming aware of their presence and their needs.” (n.7). He recommended that people “stop, approach, give a little attention, a smile, a caress, a word of comfort… (n.9).
The final part of the Pope’s message responds like a glove to the controversial proposals of the future US president: “Selfishness – individual, national and of power groups – feeds a climate of mistrust and division that does not respond to the needs of an interdependent world in which we should act and live as members of a single family living in the same interconnected global village.”
The Azorean economy is almost at full employment, says the government. Tourism is breaking records in terms of visitors and revenue. However, we still have the lowest social welfare levels in the country, and around a quarter of the Azorean population is poor.
In Ponta Delgada, around 100 people are living on the streets. In the archipelago, the homeless number close to four hundred and already exist on the “small islands”.
This means that very little has been done regarding social and human rights and that social justice has not gone from words to deeds. Neither the Catholic Church nor society, the political powers, and economic agents have taken the problem to heart. Instead, they limited themselves to solving one-off cases and charity and could not significantly reduce the problem.
At the end of the 1960s, Onésimo T. Almeida described the society in which we lived in this poem: “Of wonders and dreams/the islands are said to be. Yes, it is, for dine eyes,/but for my people ‘not yet!”
Sixty years have passed, and the situation remains the same. Until when?

José Gabriel Ávila*

*Journalist c.p.239 A
http://escritemdia.blogspot.com

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers from the Azores to give the diaspora and those interested in the current Azores a sense of the significant opinions on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL)