In a video message to participants in the 48th Social Week for Italian Catholics, Pope Francis talked about the different types of work, including that which degrades, humiliates or exploits people. Some of the examples he gave were slavery, the arms trade, the black market or jobs that offer no security.

He also mentioned those who work in dangerous or unhealthy conditions, leading to the deaths and injuries of hundreds of people in Italy. He also expressed solidarity with all those unemployed or underemployed, and were losing hope of ever finding a decently paid job.

The global economic system, the Pope said, was focused on consumerism, not on human dignity or protection of the environment.

‘Don’t mention the Rohingya’ – Bishops

Fr Mariano Soe Naing, communications director for Myanmar’s bishops, said many were hoping that when Pope Francis visits Myanmar in late November he will not mention the Rohingya, the Muslim group against which ethnic cleansing was practised.

Soe Naing said the country could be plunged into chaos if the Pope referred to them. He told Catholic News Service that while the bishops support democracy and back democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi, they undersood her silence on the Rohingya.

The Asian church news agency ucanews.com reported that the country’s Catholic bishops had told the Papal Nuncio in June that they would prefer it if Pope Francis avoided mentioning the Rohingya by name.

Despite the caution urged by bishops in Myammar, Pope Francis mentioned the Rohingya by name last August and even expressed his closeness to them.

Poor response to Vatican youth survey

The number of young people who answered the online survey in preparation for the Synod of Bishops’ assembly on young people in October 2018 has been fewer than expected.

The synod will focus on ‘Young people, Faith and Vocational Discernment’.

The direct consultation was unprecedented for the Vatican. It was meant to take place in parallel with the contributions from bishops’ conferences from each country around the world.

A month after the survey closed, the synod’s secretary-general Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri said that while a total of 148,247 people visited the survey site, less than half this number – a little more than 65,000 – actually answered all the questions.

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)