Pope Francis has paid tribute to those who struggle for worker’s rights and social justice across the globe. They are, he said in a video message, “social poets, because you have the ability and the courage to create hope where there appears to be only waste and exclusion”.
Addressing activists from the most marginalised parts of society, Pope Francis in particular raised Black Lives Matter protestors as “good Samaritans”, who refused to “pass by on the other side of the road” after the murder of George Floyd in May last year. Popular movements, such as the protests against racial injustice that spread through the US after Floyd’s murder by Derek Chauvin were, he said, “collective Samaritans”.
“Poetry means creativity, and you create hope” the Pope added, addressing the IV World Meeting of Popular Movements, a regular conference instituted by the Holy Father on becoming Pope.
Previously held in 2014, 2015, and 2016, the conference brings together movements representing people from across the world, bringing together participants in walks of life ranging from street vendors to fishermen. Organisations involved in the conferences include the Indian National Slum Dwellers Foundation, the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST), and the PICO Network, based in the United States.
Focusing on the “three T’s” – three aims, all of which in Spanish, begin with T – shelter, work and land, the conference will be held virtually for the first time ever, broadcast live, simultaneously in Spanish, English, Portuguese and French. The Pope’s comments come in the second session of the 2021 conference, with the first session, in July, featuring Cardinal Peter Turkson, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
“There is a need for new moments of encounter, discernment and concerted action,” the Pope said, warning that returning to the worldviews of the past “be suicidal...ecocidal and genocidal.” Issues highlighted by the Pope ranged from the “silent epidemic” of chronic anxiety to racial injustice, xenophobia, and the “scourge” of food poverty.
Against these threats, the social movements constitute an “invisible army...a fundamental part of that humanity that fights for life against a system of death.” And to end that system, “personal change is necessary, but it is also indispensable to adapt our socio-economic models so that they have a human face, because many models have lost it.”