“The world is on the verge of suicide if we do not radically change the way in which we deal with problems linked to climate change and the current development model.”
Francis said this in his conversation with journalists on board the flight from Bangui to Rome.
The Pope also responded to a couple of questions about the Vatileaks scandal: “Vallejo and Chaouqui’s appointments in the COSEA commission were a mistake,” he said and went on to give significant recognition to the work Ratzinger had started.
In Kenya, you met poor families and listened to their stories of exclusion from fundamental human rights such as access to drinking water. What did you feel when you listened to their stories and what needs to be done to end such injustices?
“I have spoken about this problem on a number of occasions. I do not recall the statistics precisely but I seem to recall reading that 80% of the world’s wealth is in the hands of 17% of the population, I don’t know if that’s true.
“It is an economic system that places money at the centre, the god money. I remember a non-Catholic ambassador once speaking in French and saying “Nous sommes tombés dans l’idolatrie de l’argent”.
“What did I feel in Kangemi? I felt pain, great pain! Yesterday I went to a children’s hospital, the only one in Bangui and in the whole country. In the intensive care unit there’s no oxygen, there were children that were malnourished. Idolatry is when a man or a woman loses his or her ID card, in other words their identity as God’s children and prefers to seek a tailor-made God.
The bottom line is this; if humanity does not change, poverty, tragedies, wars and injustice will continue. Children will go on dying of hunger. What does that percentage of people that holds 80% of the world’s wealth in their hands think of this? This is not communism, it is the truth. And seeing the truth is not easy.” Continue reading
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