Pope Francis
Pope Francis
Pope Francisis the 266th and current Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, a title he holds ex officio as Bishop of Rome, and Sovereign of the Vatican City. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European pope since the Syrian Gregory III, who died in 741...
NationalityArgentinian
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth17 December 1936
CityBuenos Aires, Argentina
The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish.
We cannot sleep peacefully while babies are dying of hunger and the elderly are without medical assistance
Today children are disposed of because there is no food or because they are killed before being born – children are discarded. The elderly are disposed of, well, because they are useless, they do not produce, neither children nor the elderly produce; then, with more or less sophisticated systems they are slowly abandoned and now, as in this crisis it is necessary to recover some equilibrium, we are witnessing a third very painful discarding –the discarding of young people. Millions of young people… are discarded from work, are unemployed.
Where the # elderly are not honored, there is no future for the young.
We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment.
A population that does not take care of the elderly and of children and the young has no future, because it abuses both its memory and its promise.
Every child who, rather than being born, is condemned unjustly to being aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who even before he was born, and then just after birth, experienced the world’s rejection. And every elderly person…even if he is ill or at the end of his days, bears the face of Christ. They cannot be discarded, as the ‘culture of waste’ suggests!
How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion.
In our families we learn to love and to recognise the dignity of all, especially of the elderly
Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?
It is a mortal sin to discard the elderly.
Take care of brothers and sisters who are weaker ... the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the homeless and strangers, because we will be judged on this.
Human life, the person is no longer perceived as a primary value to be respected and protected, especially if poor or disabled, if not yet useful - such as the unborn child - or no longer needed - such as the elderly.
A society which abandons children and the elderly severs its roots and darkens its future.