World Meeting of Popular Movements lays foundation for justice

(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis met on Thursday with participants in a World Meeting of Popular Movements that was taking place in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. The three day congress brought together organisations of people on the margins of society, including the poor, the unemployed and those who’ve lost their agricultural land. The encounter followed on from a first meeting in the Vatican last October, organised with the support of the Pontifical Justice and Peace Council and the Academy of Social Sciences.

To find out about the most important goals of the congress, Vatican Radio’s Brazilian correspondent, Bianca Fraccalvieri, spoke to one of the English speaking delegates, Franciscan Father Daniel Callahan who serves the multi-ethnic parish of St Joan of Arc in Toronto, Canada

Listen: 

Fr Callahan says the congress is trying to lay “a foundation for justice”, so its timing is very important, following the release of the Pope’s new encyclical that has its foundations in Franciscan spirituality and in the social justice movements that began with Pope Leo XIII…

He says that social justice movement is now “being announced in a whole new way” so that economists and business people, plus those in positions of responsibility, will be able to have “a bigger mind about what justice means” in terms of distribution of the resources of the world….