Vatican City, 2014 (VIS) – A press
conference was held this morning in the Holy See Press Office to
present the World Meeting of Popular Movements, to be held in Rome
from 27 to 29 October. The event was organised by the Pontifical
Council “Justice and Peace”, in collaboration with the Pontifical
Academy for Social Sciences and the leaders of various movements.
The speakers at the conference were
Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, president of “Justice and
Peace”, Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the
Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, and Juan Grabois, head of the
Confederation of Workers of the Popular Economy, dedicated
principally to organisations and movements for the excluded and
marginalised.
Grabois knew Pope Francis when he was
Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and emphasised that the then-Cardinal
Bergoglio sympathised with the struggle of excluded workers in very
difficult moments, and accompanied them in the work of assisting the
cartoneros, peasants, those forced to live on the streets and, in
general, the heirs of a crisis brought on by neoliberal capitalism.
“Francis summons us again today, from a universal perspective; he
calls to the poor, organised in thousands of popular movements, to
fight, without arrogance but with courage, without violence but with
tenacity, for this dignity that has been taken from us, and for
social justice”.
“Our encounter responds mainly to
concrete and simple objectives we share and want to pass on to our
children and grandchildren, but that are increasingly harder for the
popular majority to reach: land, housing and work”, he continued,
also expressing the need to promote the organisation of the poor “to
construct from grass-roots level a human alternative to this
exclusionary globalisation that has robbed us of our sacred rights to
housing, work, land, the environment and peace”.
The World Meeting of Popular Movements
will be attended by the social leaders of the five continents,
representing organisations of increasingly excluded social sectors:
workers in precarious employment conditions; migrants; temporary
workers; the unemployed and those those who are self-employed,
without legal protection, labour rights or union recognition;
peasants; the landless; indigenous peoples and those at risk of
expulsion from the fields as a result of agricultural speculation and
violence; and those who live in the peripheries and in temporary
settlements, often migrants and displaced peoples, who are
marginalised, forgotten, and without adequate urban infrastructure.
Alongside them there are trades unions and social, charitable and
human rights organisations, who have demonstrated their closeness to
these movements and who, it has been suggested, might accompany them,
respecting the role of grass-roots movements.
“The aims of the meeting include
sharing Pope Francis' thought on social matters, debating the causes
of growing social inequality and the increase in exclusion throughout
the world, reflecting on the organisational experiences of popular
movements and the resolution of problems regarding land, housing and
work, evaluating the role of movements in the processes of
peace-building and care for the environment, especially in regions
affected by conflicts and disputes over natural resources, discussing
the relationship between popular movements and the Church, and how to
go ahead in the creation of joint and permanent collaboration”.
Grabois emphasised the importance of
the two acts with which the meeting will conclude: the publication of
a final declaration with the widest consensus possible, and the
constitution of a Council of Popular Movements which will work to
establish possible cases of global level collaboration.
Cardinal Turkson stated that it was
essential for both the Church and the world to “listen to the cry
for justice” from the excluded; “not only to the sufferings, but
also to the expectations, hopes and proposals which the marginalised
themselves have. They must be protagonists of their own lives, and
not simply passive recipients of the charity or plans of others. They
must be protagonists of the needed economic and social, political and
cultural changes. ... The Church wants to make its own the needs and
aspirations of the popular movements, and to join with those who, by
means of different initiatives, are making every effort to stimulate
social change towards a more just world”.
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