Excerpt from Pope Francis's Wednesday audience today. [1] I feel a bit surreal because I was walking on the Via Ottaviano just about an hour ago. Apparently the following excerpt was "off the cuff":
“What is in charge today isn't the human person but money. Money is in command. And God our Father has given us the task of caring for the earth not for the money, but for us: for men and women. This is our charge. Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption. It is a 'culture of waste'."
“If, for example, on a winter's night,” he continued, “a person dies here in [nearby] Via Ottaviano, that's not news. If in so many parts of the world there are children who have nothing to eat, that's not news. It seems normal. It must not be this way! And yet these things come to be normal … On the other hand, a drop of ten points on the stock exchange constitutes a tragedy. If someone dies that isn't news but a ten point drop in the markets is a tragedy! Thus people are discarded, as if they were garbage.”
“Human life, the person, is no longer felt to be the primary value to respect and care for … This culture of waste has also made us insensitive to a squandering and wastefulness of food … Consumerism has caused us to get used to the daily excess and waste of food, which we are no longer capable of seeing for its true worth, which goes well beyond mere economic parameters. Remember, however, that the food that is thrown away is as if we had stolen it from the table of the poor, from those who are hungry!”
“I invite you all to reflect on the problem of the loss and the waste of food … Let us all make the serious commitment to respect and care for creation, to be attentive to every person, to oppose the culture of wastefulness and waste, and to promote a culture of solidarity and encounter.”
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Notes:
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