Today a press conference was held at the Vatican to present the Third World Meeting of Popular Movements, to be held in Rome from 3 to 5 November 2016.
The speakers were Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, Holy See Permanent Observer at the United Nations and delegate secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Juan Grabois, consulter to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and co-founder of the Movement of Excluded Workers of the Conference of the Popular Economy.
Following the meetings in Rome 2014 and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 2015, next week around 200 members will meet, representing 92 popular movements from 65 countries. The themes to be considered in the third meeting will again be “ las tres T: Trabajo, Techo, Tierra ”; (“The three Ls: Labour, Lodgings and Land”); care for nature; and migrants and refugees.
Read the Pope’s addresses here:
June 2015: https://zenit.org/articles/pope-s-address-to-popular-movements-2/
October 2014: https://zenit.org/articles/pope-s-address-to-popular-movements/
The meeting will take place at the Pontifical International Maria Mater Ecclesiae College from 2 to 4 November. Then, on 5 November, the Holy Father Francis will receive the participants in audience. The attendees will include Don Luigi Ciotti, founder of the Abel group which fights against abuse by the Mafia throughout Italy; Vandana Shiva, Indian philosopher and environmentalist; and Pepe Mujica, president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015.
The “popular movements” are grassroots organizations established by those whose inalienable rights to decent work, decent housing and fertile land are undermined, threatened or denied outright. In the main, these movements represent three increasingly excluded social sectors: (a) workers who are at risk or lack job security, in the informal sector or self-employed, migrants, day- labourers and all those unprotected by labour rights or trade unions; (b) landless farmers, family farmers, indigenous people and those at risk of being driven out of the countryside by agro-speculation and violence; (c) the marginalized and forgotten, including squatters and inhabitants of peripheral neighbourhoods or informal settlements, without adequate urban infrastructure. Also taking part in the meeting will be trade unions and social and human rights organisations which are close to these movements
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For further information, see:
http://www.iustitiaetpax.va
http://movimientospopulares.org/
