After the enthusiasm of his meeting Tuesday evening with young people, Pope Francis had a more subdued encounter today with representatives of labour and the business world, in his penultimate public address of a six-day tour of Mexico.
The Holy Father urged the group to invest in people and creating opportunities, warning that poverty was the impetus for so many youth to enter the drug trade.
Think of what kind of Mexico you want to leave for your children, he told them.
“When faced with tenets of the Church’s Social Doctrine, it is objected frequently: ‘These teachings would have us be charitable organizations or that we transform our businesses into philanthropic institutions,’” the Holy Father acknowledged.
But he explained, “The only aspiration of the Church’s Social Doctrine is to guard over the integrity of people and social structures. Every time that, for whatever reason, this integrity is threatened or reduced to a consumer good, the Church’s Social Doctrine will be a prophetic voice to protect us all from being lost in the seductive sea of ambition. Every time that a person’s integrity is violated, society, in a certain sense, begins to decline. This is against no one, but in favour of all. Every sector has the obligation of looking out for the good of all; we are all in the same boat.”
The Pope praised the attitude of a worker who said that every time he goes to the negotiating table, he knows he will lose something. I have to lose something so that everyone might win, he explained.
“I know that the issues raised are not easy,” the Pope said, “but it is worse to leave the future in the hands of corruption, brutality and the lack of equity. […] Profit and capital are not a good over and above the human person; they are at the service of the common good. When the common good is used only in the service of profit and capital, the only thing gained is known as exclusion.”
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On ZENIT’s Web page:
Full text: https://zenit.org/articles/80700/
