Carlos M. Frota
By following regularly the news concerning specifically our Church , I feel very often amazed by the variety of challenges that fall on the desk of Pope Francis, his staff and his closest team of advisers.
Universal institution it is, and despite the cooperation of the dioceses around the world, the Holy See is called to have an opinion about all relevant issues pertaining not just Christians but humanity in general. Not because of any imperialistic ambition of dominance, but because global conditions are the only acceptable context to understand the majority of the problems affecting mankind in our era of forced globalization.
Covid 19 didn’t come to facilitate the life of any world leader, political or religious! Just the opposite! By the magnitude of its consequences, we can say today that the surge of the virus and its spread represent the line of division between two distinctive periods in recent human history.
Who ever thought that an invisible virus would be able to bring the entire world to a halt within a matter of weeks? Who could ever have predicted that the megacities of New York, São Paulo, Paris, and even Rome, would seem lifeless and empty for several months? But now, even while we still struggle with succeeding waves of COVID 19, we already face another crossroads.
POPE FRANCIS’ RESPONSE
The creation of the Vatican COVID 19 Commission was Pope Francis’ response to an unprecedented virus. In fact, our Pope soon became certain that we will emerge either better or worse after the pandemic. The global crisis requires that the parameters of human coexistence be rethought through the lens of solidarity.
The global virus has turned many things inside-out in the world. On 20 March 2020, Pope Francis asked the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD) to create a Commission, in collaboration with other Dicasteries of the Roman Curia and other organizations, to express the Church’s solicitude and care for the whole human family facing the COVID-19 pandemic, including analysis, reflection on the new socio-economic-cultural future, and the proposal of relevant approaches.
Accordingly, that “ministry” of the government of the Church established a Vatican COVID-19 Commission to take up the Pope’s concern through the activities of five Working Groups, which are: acting now for the future; looking to the future with creativity; communicating hope; seeking common dialogue and reflections; supporting to care.
BETWEEN THE OLD NORMAL AND THE NEW SOLIDARITY
The Vatican’s COVID 19 Commission asks everybody to respond more fully and more respectfully to the suffering of those directly affected by the pandemic and to those who are more vulnerable to being infected with this disease and are subjected to more harmful social and economic impacts of this public health emergency.
The whole world has faced many challenges from this pandemic but those who are poor, marginalized, already suffering from serious health conditions, struggle much more than most of us. We must reach out in Christian solidarity to all our sisters and brothers in the human family. And, as Pope Francis tells us, since we all are in the same boat, we must learn to row together.
Pope Francis asked the COVID 19 Commission to prepare the future instead of prepare for it.
THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH: PREPARING THE FUTURE
Through its moral leadership and universal outreach, the Catholic Church should inspire change of policies, practices, and behavior at all levels, from heads of government to key decision-makers, to religious leaders and people of faith, to grassroots communities.
The Commission is well aware of what Pope Francis is urging everybody to do: never to return to the “old normal” which gave way to deep gaps between the rich and the poor, serious ecological damage and violence within our own families and in all of society.
We are invited to co-create with God a new world built on love, justice, equality, and access to decent and dignified work, education for all, and health care for everyone in need regardless of their ability to pay for such care.
BIG BUSINESS, BIG GOVERNMENT…
… and small people. What is the coronavirus crisis revealing about current political and economic systems? While big business and big government shut down during the peak situations of the pandemic, many effective responses were initiated at the local community level. Volunteers delivering food to the sick and elderly; religious Sisters producing home-made masks; university engineering students fashioning ventilators from machines we would never even have considered in pre-COVID days. Front-line workers, many of whom were migrants and refugees and who previously had faced much stigma and discrimination, risked their own lives to save the lives of people whom they had never met.
This tells us that big business and big government must change their values and focus more on persons than money or power.
NATIONALISM … NATIONALISM
The Vatican Commission also concluded that fractured and unequal responses to COVID 19 reveal the great danger of increasing nationalistic tendencies and the false notion that we can avoid global problems if we simply close or borders and our communities to so-called “foreigners.” Globalization has made us interdependent at every level of life and economic activity; clear evidence of this was shown when many countries could not even produce the medical products to keep people alive during this pandemic. The basic values and principles at the foundation of almost every major religious tradition are more needed now than ever: solidarity and subsidiarity, justice and charity, love for all, and global cooperation at every level of society.
AT A CROSSROADS…
Celebrating the 75th anniversary of FAO, Pope Francis sent a message to the Director General of the Organization. In these many years, the Pope said, FAO has learned that it is not enough to just produce food, but that “it is also important to ensure that food systems are sustainable and offer healthy diets that are accessible to all.”
Especially in these difficult times caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis stressed the importance of supporting initiatives that “promote sustainable and diversified agriculture, support small farming communities and cooperate in rural development in the poorest countries.”
Pope Francis went on to note that the current crisis shows us that we need concrete policies and actions to eradicate hunger in the world.
At times, he said, “dialectical or ideological debates distance us from achieving this goal and we allow our brothers and sisters to continue to die from lack of food.”
The history of the world is marked by epochal crises, moments in which humanity finds itself at a crossroads and has had to make truly historical choices. Are we before such an epochal crossroads today?
Will we try to restore the “old normal” that put us in such a precarious situation in the first place or will we be more serious about cooperating, in order to be better prepared for a different society in a different future for all ? We hope so…
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