She was young; in her late twenties. Tears filled her eyes while she recounted her story. Her young son was to celebrate his First Holy Communion. She wanted to organise a little party; just something simple. She worked extra as a house cleaner and managed to save €140. It would be enough, she said. However, disaster struck. Someone stole the money. What was she to do now? How would she explain to her son that all his friends had a party; but he had none.

The story still haunts me. I remembered it last week. It was marked by three events aimed at building a better world. The G8 summit met in Italy. The rich and the powerful deliberated about what best to do to get Mother Earth out of the mess we so foolishly got her into. In Malta, the Social Affairs Committee of Parliament discussed a report on poverty. We were informed that over 57,000 people live in poverty; thousands of them are children. We were told that 21% of children grew up without the necessary skills to find employment. These would be the poor of tomorrow.

They are people living without hope. Some of the speakers felt thankful because one sixth of the population were living in relative but not in absolute poverty. What is the use of such distinctions? Relative poverty is bad and bad and bad. Relative poverty means that you can't live a decent human life.

I used to say that the food we throw in our rubbish bins on Boxing Day is more abundant than what millions of people have to eat when they organise a feast. It seems that many in our country are living in a similar situation.

The poor? Who cares!

The papers reported the proceeding but nobody cared. People discussed the Isle of MTV concert. Others, probably more, discussed swine flu. Who would want to bother about the poor who live in our midst. We care about the poor who live far away. It is easier to handle them. We dip our hands into our pockets and provide the small change for them. Our conscience is then calmed; so please don't try to bother me about the poor at home. According to statistics read during the committee meeting, many Maltese believe that the poor have only themselves to blame if they are poor. This is an obscene belief if ever there was one.

The third event was Pope Bendict's publication of his third encyclical: Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). The Pope did not give us a technical plan of how a better world can be built. It is not his job to do that. He did something better though. He told about the spirit that should animate the body politic if we want to give a credible structure to our yearning for a better world.

Many read something about the encyclical. Most would soon forget about it. I heard on TV that Obama promised to read it on his flight to Kenya. Perhaps others would read it too. Will our members of Parliament that spoke so well about the poor among us find enlightenment when they read it? What will the Church in Malta do to disseminate its teachings? Will someone invite to Malta Prof Zamagni whom, it is said had more than a finger in the pontifical pie?

Will the G8 summit, the Social Affairs Committee and the Pope's encyclical make any difference to the young mother who worked extra, albeit in vain, for her son's birthday party? Will so many tearful mothers and worried fathers find any solace from these three events? Will the life of so many people suffering starvation be spared?

Unless these things happen we will not live in a better world. It will only be better when it is better for all; for you, for me and for the entire human race. Until this happens, we will keep on living in a lousy world.

One-liners (or almost) from the Encyclical

Instead of commenting about the Encyclical I am reproducing here a number of very short quotations. Reading them you can get a taste of its sound teachings.

• "A Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance."
• "Without the perspective of eternal life human progress in this world is denied breathing-space".
• "As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbours but does not make us brothers".
• "There is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge on the part of rich countries, through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care"
• "The primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity."
• "When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man's true good."
• "Without the guidance of charity in truth, this global force (globalisation) could cause unprecedented damage and create new divisions."
• Without God, development becomes negative, "dehumanized"
• We must therefore mobilise ourselves, so that economics evolves "towards fully human outcomes."
• Profit as the exclusive goal "without the common good as its ultimate end, risks destroying wealth and creating poverty".
• "The world's wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase", with new forms of poverty emerging.
• "There is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge on the part of rich countries, through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care."
• "These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems", with "grave danger for the rights of workers".
• The respect for life "cannot in any way be detached" from the development of peoples.
• In economically developed countries, there is "an anti-birth mentality, frequent attempts (being) made to export this mentality to other States as if it were a form of cultural progress".
• "When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man's true good."
• One must hope that the economic choices continue "to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment" for everyone.
• "Without the guidance of charity in truth, this global force could cause unprecedented damage and create new divisions".
• The conviction that economics are free from the "influences of a moral character" "has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way".
• "Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfil its proper economic function".
• The market "cannot rely only on itself", it "must draw its moral energies from other subjects" and must not consider the poor as a "burden, but a resource". The market must not become "the place where the strong subdue the weak".
• Commercial logic needs to be "directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility".