Vatican City, 4 February 2014 (VIS) –
A press conference was held in the Holy See Press Office this morning
to present the Holy Father's Message for Lent 2014. The speakers were
Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council “Cor
Unum”, Msgr. Giampietro Dal Toso and Msgr. Segundo Tejado Munoz,
respectively secretary and under-secretary of the same dicastery, and
the couple Davide Dotta and Anna Zumbo, missionaries in Haiti.
Before the presentation, the president
of Cor Unum announced that he will visit Haiti again in March, in
order to open a school financed on behalf of the Pope as a sign of
his closeness to the Haitian population, afflicted in 2010 by an
earthquake which claimed more than 220,000 victims and affected a
total of more than 3 million people.
Cardinal Sarah then went on to explain
that the text of this year's Message from the Pope for Lent focuses
on poverty, and Christ's poverty in particular; a concept very dear
to Pope Francis, who since the beginning of his pontificate has
attempted to emphasise this dimension of Christian life. “Certainly,
the Christian vision of poverty is not the same as that which is
commonly held. Too often we consider poverty from a sociological
perspective, and it is understood as a lack of material goods.
Furthermore, the concept of a “poor Church for the poor” is often
evoked as a sort of challenge to the Church, unfortunately also
setting a Church of the poor, a good Church … against a Church of
preaching and truth, a Church dedicated to prayer and to the defence
of doctrine and morals”.
“The first point of reference for a
Christian to understand poverty is indeed Christ, who made himself
poor so that he could enrich us through his poverty. … The choice
of poverty by Christ suggests to us that there exists a positive
dimension of poverty; this resonates throughout the Gospel, which
proclaims that the poor are blessed. It is clear that in this
dimension of poverty there is an aspect of despoliation and
sacrifice. But this is possible because 'Jesus’ wealth lies in his
being the Son'. We cannot set our bourgeois consciences at rest, the
Pope means, by denouncing material lack on the part of others or
denouncing poverty as a system. … The Lenten Message we are
presenting here today makes an important distinction between poverty
and destitution. It is not poverty, which is an evangelical attitude,
but rather destitution that we wish to combat. The Holy Father, in
his Message, lists three forms of destitution: material, moral and
spiritual. The first 'affects those living in conditions opposed to
human dignity'. Faced with this form of destitution, the Church
offers her service, 'her diakonia, in meeting these needs and binding
these wounds which disfigure the face of humanity'. Moral destitution
consists in slavery to vice and sin. This form of destitution is also
the cause of economic ruin, and is always linked to spiritual
destitution, which occurs when we drift away from God and refuse His
love”.
“I believe that this broad view of
poverty, of destitution, and as a consequence the help that the
Church may offer humanity, help us also to arrive at a more complete
vision of man and his needs, without falling in the trap of
anthropological reductionism which claims to resolve all the problems
of the human person simply by resolving the problems of physical and
material well-being”.
The president of Cor Unum recalled that
in the Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”, Pope Francis
writes that “Our preferential option for the poor must mainly
translate into a privileged and preferential religious care”. He
affirmed that this concept is fundamental “so as not to transform
the Church into that non-governmental organisation that Pope Francis
spoke about in his first Holy Mass as Pontiff with the Cardinal
Fathers. It would be a great pity if our gaze upon those in need
failed to acknowledge the spiritual poverty that often lurks in the
heart of man and pains him deeply, even though he may be in a
condition of material comfort. … But if we wish to fully grasp Pope
Francis' Message, we must not consider it only in terms of its
anthropological value. Man is by nature the son of God. This is his
wealth! The great flaw of modern culture is that it has imagined
mankind capable of being happy without God, thus denying that which
is most profound in the human person: that is, his existential bond
with the Father Who grants him life. … Thus, it is a crime to
deprive the poor of the presence of God, just as it is a crime to
consider man and allow man to live as if God did not exist, to negate
his being as a creation and therefore his fundamental belonging and
affiliation with God. … Therefore, work in development cannot be
simply that of creating new needs, but rather taking a serious look
at what the person truly is”.
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