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Pope calls for 'end to discarding people'
Santa Cruz (Bolivia), July 10
Pope Francis
has called for "an end to discarding people" and said that given so
much hunger in the world, we must not simply say "the accounts don't
balance" but rather feed the poor.
"Faced with so many kinds of
hunger in our world, we cannot say to ourselves: 'Things don't add up;
we will never balance the books. There is nothing to be done.' Because
then despair takes over our hearts," he said during a huge Mass he
celebrated in this eastern Bolivian city.
Before hundreds of
thousands of people in Christ the Redeemer Park, the pontiff on Thursday
criticised what he said was the logic of consumerism or discarding
things, including one's fellow man, that is trying to impose itself upon
the world.
He used the biblical story of the loaves and fishes,
when Jesus's apostles wanted him to send the crowds away because there
would be no way to feed all of them, but he multiplied the food on hand
and there was enough for all.
The Argentine pope said that the
story had particular "resonance" in the modern world, telling his
listeners: "No one needs to go away, no one needs to be discarded; you
yourselves, give them something to eat. Jesus speaks these words to us,
here in this square."
The pontiff said that the logic of
materialism results in everything becoming an object that can be bought
and sold, consumed and negotiated. It is, he said, a logic that leaves
space for very few, discarding everyone else who does not produce, those
who are not considered to be capable or worthy because apparently the
"numbers don't add up".
Francis said that in Bolivia the richness
of a society is measured "in the elderly who manage to transmit their
wisdom and the memory of their people to the youngest".
He also
praised mothers, who during his visit to the poor South American nation
he said he had seen "carrying their children on their backs".
"Carrying
upon themselves the life, the future of their people. Carrying their
reason for joy, their hopes. Carrying the blessing of the Earth in their
(children). Carrying the work performed by their hands," he continued.
"But
also carrying on their shoulders disappointments, sadness and
bitterness, injustice that seems not to stop and the scars of unrealised
justice," he continued.
The mothers of Bolivia, he said, "carry upon themselves the memory of their peopleâ€.
“Because peoples have memory, a memory that passes from generation to generation, a memory that is under way," he said.
Francis
urged his audience to always retain that memory because losing it
"disorients us, it closes off our hearts to others, especially to the
poorest".