Pope's video message to Festival of Church's Social Doctrine
(Vatican Radio) Celebrating the social teaching of the Church: that’s the focus of
a video message sent by Pope Francis to a four day meeting taking place in Verona,
Italy, this week on the theme ‘Less inequality, more difference’. In the message
to participants at the 3rd Festival of Catholic Social Doctrine, the Pope
reiterates his belief that young people and the elderly are central to the wellbeing
of society – even if they are not contributing directly to its economic growth. Noting
that in some countries youth unemployment has risen to over 40% of the population,
the Holy Father says that the future of society is in jeopardy if we do not find ways
of valuing the energy of young people and the wisdom of the elderly. Solidarity
with the unemployed, the weak, the fragile, the Pope goes on, has become a virtual
swear word in our profit-oriented environment. Yet this solidarity, he says, is central
to the social teaching of the Church which contains within it an almost mystical vision
of justice, equality and long-term development for all Finally Pope Francis recalls
how, as a young man in the early 1950s, he heard his own father speaking about Christian
cooperatives that offer a slower but more just model of economic development. That
model, which draws on Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum he says, can continue
to inspire concrete actions and solutions to the economic and social problems we’re
facing today.
Listen to Philippa Hitchen's report and watch the Pope's video
message in Italian: