Saying money can be a god who terrorizes humanity, Pope Francis on
Saturday complained that “scandalous sums” are devoted to saving banks
from bankruptcy, but nothing comparable to saving suffering people.
“What’s happening in today’s world that, when a bank goes bankrupt,
immediately scandalous sums appear to save it, but when there’s a
‘bankruptcy of humanity,’ there isn’t one-one thousandth of the same
amount to save these brothers who suffer so much?”
The pope said the root of the problem is idolatry of wealth.
“The entire social doctrine of the church and the magisterium of my
predecessors rebel against money as an idol that reigns instead of
serves, tyrannizing and terrorizing humanity,” the pope said.
Like all forms of terrorism, the terrorism of an economy focused only
on making money relies on people’s fear for effectiveness, Pope Francis
said Nov. 5 during a meeting at the Vatican with participants in the
third World Meeting of Popular Movements, a collection of grassroots
organizations of the poor, the underemployed, indigenous communities and
farmworkers.
“When this terror, which is sown in the peripheries with massacres,
pillaging, oppression and injustice, explodes in the centers with
various forms of violence - including odious and vile attacks - the
citizens who still have some rights are tempted by the false security of
physical or social walls,” he said. “Walls that enclose some and exile
others.”
Frightened citizens building walls on one side and frightened and
excluded people on the other - “is this the life that God our father
wants for his children?” the pope asked.
Wherever there is fear, he said, there is someone who will increase
and manipulate it.
“Because fear, besides being good business for
merchants of weapons and death, weakens and destabilizes us, destroying
our psychological and spiritual defenses, anesthetizing us to the
suffering of others and, in the end, making us cruel.”
Pope Francis said mercy is the “best antidote” to fear. It works
better than anti-depression medicine and is “much more effective than
walls, iron bars, alarms and weapons. And it is free.”
Mercy and courage also are needed to respond to the huge wave of
refugees, migrants and displaced people all over the globe, he said.
“No one should be forced to flee his or her homeland,” he said. “But
the evil is doubled when, facing terrible circumstances, the migrant is
thrown into the clutches of human traffickers to cross the border. And
it is tripled if, arriving in the land where he or she hoped to find a
better future, one is despised, exploited or even enslaved.”
Pope Francis urged members of the popular movements to lobby their
governments to be more welcoming of migrants and to improve programs to
ensure their integration into their host societies.
The political activism of the groups, he said, is important for
ensuring true democracy and not simply an attitude where politicians
address poverty without ever listening to or responding to the poor.
In democracies, he said, people who “seek the common good can defeat,
with the help of God, the false prophets who exploit fear and
desperation, who sell magic formulas of hatred and cruelty or selfish
well-being and illusory security.”
When getting involved in politics, though, the pope said, members of the movement must guard against corruption.
All people are called to be honest, he said, but politicians and
public servants have an even greater obligation. “The standard is very
high: one must live the vocation of service with a strong sense of
austerity and humility. This applies to politicians, but also for social
leaders and for us pastors.”
Pope Francis said politics is not the place for “anyone who is too
attached to material things or to the mirror, those who love money,
lavish banquets, sumptuous houses, refined clothes, luxury cars.”
They don’t belong in the seminary, either, he said.
Seeking power or money “sullies the noble cause” of politics as service, the pope said.
“Fight the fear with a life of service, solidarity and humility on
behalf of the people, especially those who suffer,” he said. “Against
the terror, the best remedy is love. Love heals all.”
Saying that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “always chose fraternal
love, even in the midst of the worst persecution and humiliation,” Pope
Francis quoted from one of the sermons of the civil rights leader:
“Hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the
universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me
back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends.
Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong
person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of
hate, the chain of evil.”