POPE FRANCIS CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND CHARITY: 1st World Day of the Poor
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POPE FRANCIS CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND CHARITY
On June 13, the Feast Day of Saint Anthony of Padua, Patron Saint of the Poor, Pope Francis issued a papal message for the 1st World Day of the Poor: “Let us love, not with words but with deeds.”
The World Day of the Poor will be observed on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (in 2017, this will be November 19), which happens to be the same day that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is promoted throughout U.S. parishes.
Pope Francis wrote that "Whenever we set out to love as Jesus loved, we have to take the Lord as our example; especially when it comes to loving the poor" and that "the earliest community realized that being a disciple of Jesus meant demonstrating fraternity and solidarity, in obedience to the Master’s proclamation that the poor are blessed and heirs to the Kingdom of heaven."
He chided those who "may think of the poor simply as the beneficiaries of our occasional volunteer work, or of impromptu acts of generosity that appease our conscience." He reminded all of us that "Saint John Chrysostom’s admonition remains ever timely: “If you want to honor the body of Christ, do not scorn it when it is naked; do not honor the Eucharistic Christ with silk vestments, and then, leaving the church, neglect the other Christ suffering from cold and nakedness”
He encouraged us to view poverty broadly: the "faces marked by suffering, marginalization, oppression, violence, torture and imprisonment, war, deprivation of freedom and dignity, ignorance and illiteracy, medical emergencies and shortage of work, trafficking and slavery, exile, extreme poverty and forced migration. … [those] exploited by base interests, crushed by the machinations of power and money. … [and] poverty born of social injustice, moral degeneration, the greed of a chosen few, and generalized indifference!"
Read the entire message