The Pope approved an International Theological Commission paper entitled ‘Religious freedom for the good of all. A theological approach to contemporary challenges’.

The Commission says that democratic States are moving towards a “soft totalitarianism”, which – in the name of an “alleged ideological neutrality” – aims to remove “every ethical justification and every religious inspiration” and supports an “ideology of neutrality which, in fact, imposes the exclusion of religious expression from the public sphere”. This “makes it particularly vulnerable to the spread of ethical nihilism in the public sphere”.

The Commission states that “a civil culture that defines its own humanism through the removal of the religious component of the human, is thus forced to remove decisive parts of its own history: of its own knowledge, of its own tradition, of its own social cohesion”.

Global inequalities

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, said: “Wasteful patterns of consumption, growing inequalities, the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources [and] the absence of restrictions or safeguards in industries all endanger the natural environment.

“Research across several decades shows, with insignificant variations, that inequalities in consumption are stark. Globally, the 20 per cent of the world’s highest-income people account for 86 per cent of total consumption, while the poorest 20 per cent a mere 1.3 per cent. Confronted with these and other data that demonstrate drastic inequalities, Pope Francis exhorts us to an “ecological conversion” which calls for a change to a more modest lifestyle and responsible consumption, and for a greater awareness of the universal destination of the world’s resources.

Touch Jesus’s wounds

In last Sunday’s Angelus, the Pope said: “To touch Jesus’s wounds [is to touch] many problems, difficulties, persecutions and sicknesses of many suffering people. Are you not at peace? Go visit someone who is the symbol of Jesus’s wound. Touch Jesus’s wound. Mercy flows from those wounds.

“Therefore, today is the Sunday of Mercy, which comes to all of us through [His] wounds. All of us, we know, are in need of mercy. Let us approach Jesus and touch his wounds in our suffering brothers.

“Jesus’s wounds are a treasure: mercy flows from there. Let us be courageous and touch his wounds. He is before the Father with these wounds, he makes the Father see them as if to say: ‘Father, this is the price, these wounds are what I have paid for my brothers.’ Jesus intercedes, with his wounds, before the Father. He gives us mercy if we approach him, and intercedes for us. Do not forget Jesus’s wounds.”        

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)

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