G8 countries' bishops urge leaders to focus on poor

[UrbScotty]

The heads of the national conferences of bishops from the nations participating in the upcoming G8 summit have sent a joint letter to the leaders of G8 nations commenting on the issues they would like to see emphasized at the summit. Citing recent comments from good Pope Francis on making a special committment to those in poverty worldwide, the bishops ask G8 leaders, including President Obama, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, President Hollande of France, Chancellor Merkel of Germany and President Putin of Russia, "to protect poor persons and assist developing countries at the upcoming G8 Summit in the United Kingdom." The bishops urge "steps to improve nutrition, reduce hunger and poverty, and strengthen just tax, trade and transparency policies for the common good of all."

The Bishops, who include the USCCB's Cardinal Timothy Dolan; British Archbishop Vincent Nichols; André Cardinal Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris; Robert Zollitsch, Archbishop of Freiburg; Leo Jun Ikenaga, S.J., Archbishop of Osaka; and Reinhard Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich, write: "Your focus on agriculture and nutrition ahead of the G8 Meeting is timely. In a world that has made great strides in improving food production and distribution, far too many of God’s children still go to bed hungry or suffer from a lack of nutrition, a tragedy that has lifelong consequences for health and educational achievement. In particular, there is a need to strengthen assistance to African countries in order to improve local agriculture." This year's G8 will be held June 17 - 18 in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. G8 leaders will not have to look too hard to find the world's poor in Enniskillen. Reuters reports that derelict businesses around the 5-star hotel which hosts the summit will be the recipients of real-world photoshopping as mock-ups of actual storefronts will be set into the dusty windows of the city's closed shops; thousands of pounds have been committed to the "beautification project" meant to disguise Enniskillen's economic distress.

But G8 bishops were not the only Catholic prelates with the poor in mind this week. Good Pope Francis also shared some wisdom G8 leader may wish to contemplate as they regard the verdant hills of Fermanagh. "Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules," Pope Francis said during his General Audience (and weekly catechetical instruction session) yesterday. "God our Father did not give the task of caring for the earth to money, but to us, to men and women: we have this task! Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the 'culture of waste.'

"If you break a computer it is a tragedy, but poverty, the needs, the dramas of so many people end up becoming the norm. If on a winter’s night, here nearby in Via Ottaviano, for example, a person dies, that is not news. If in so many parts of the world there are children who have nothing to eat, that's not news, it seems normal. It cannot be this way! Yet these things become the norm: that some homeless people die of cold on the streets is not news.... A person dying is not news, but if the stock markets drop ten points it is a tragedy! Thus people are disposed of, as if they were trash."

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/g8-bishops-and-himself-pope-francis-urge-preferential-option

[IrishAyes]

1. That last line all too true.