Pope Leo XIV deplored the spread of a social injustice “springing from arrogant corruption” and denounced the fact that the digital environment accentuates the “curtain of indifference” towards the poor, in his message published on Sunday, reports EFE, according to Agerpres.
“The cry for justice of the poor is silenced today by numerous techniques, more and more subtle, until any effort by them to make their requests heard remains voiceless,” the sovereign pontiff states in the message.
Specifically, he pointed out that “the digital environment radicalises prejudice” against the most disadvantaged people and contributes to strengthening the “curtain of indifference surrounding their causes”.
He also lamented “how widespread the social injustice that springs from arrogant corruption is even today”, a reality that he qualified as “deplorable” and “discriminatory”.
According to the Pope, when the sense of transcendence is lost, societies fall into a “logic of desacralization, characterized by abuse and exclusion, which marginalizes and humiliates”, in which people stop sitting next to each other in the spirit of mutual respect to place “some above others under the sign of dominance and submission”.
“The first to feel the consequences are the poor, whose numbers, not coincidentally, are increasing in many societies,” he warned.
The Christian community cannot remain “indifferent” and emphasized the role of the Church as a “refuge” for those living in vulnerable conditions, he also claimed.
Faced with the “obsession of those who accumulate riches only for themselves,” Leo XIV opposed the example of those who open their hearts to the needy.
“The obsession of those who accumulate riches only for themselves collides with the determination of God who, through the testimony of flesh and blood men, opens hearts and welcomes them into His love,” he wrote.
The sovereign pontiff also urged a “serious examination of conscience” to assess how much remains to be done in favor of the poor and their freedom.
“Then we will see that the poor themselves become a refuge for others. The experience of poverty makes them especially receptive to a renewed solidarity in the face of challenges,” he stressed.
To counter this inertia, the pope cites the example of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose death this year marks eight hundred years.
The Pope recalls how the Italian saint came to take off his clothes to put on the rags of a beggar in Rome and urges the whole of today's society “to put itself in the place of the poor and listen to them, instead of talking only about itself”.
