COVID-19 brought to the fore several different crises: the health, the environmental, the economic and social, the political and the crisis of human relationships. The description of these crises and a proposed way forward are perhaps the most important takeaways from last Monday’s state of the world address Pope Francis delivered to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican.
He put special emphasis on two of these crises probably because they are intimately connected. Francis considers the political crisis as “a much deeper crisis” and deems it to be the root of other crises. He describes the crisis of human relationships as the expression of a general anthropological crisis and as “perhaps the most serious of all”.
He is quite correct to say so because our concept of the human person is the heart of the matter.
During that address to diplomats, Francis stated that the pandemic “showed us the face of a world that is seriously ill” and that “a way of life dominated by selfishness and a culture of waste” is risky. For Francis, the pandemic set before us a choice: “either to continue on the road we have followed until now or to set out on a new path.”
The politics we need
The start for this new path should be the adoption of a new way of doing politics based on the transcendent dignity of the human person, the shunning of an individualist mindset and the recognition of solidarity as the core of human nature.
What Francis told diplomats is not new. It is an important leitmotiv of his pontificate.
In the encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis speaks of “the politics we need” in sharp contrast to the politics we have. In the book Let Us Dream: the Path to a Better Future he delved deeper into the subject. In both documents he proposes a new kind of politics which he describes as “healthy politics”.
In both documents, Francis speaks of the primacy of politics over the economy. In Fratelli Tutti he quotes his other major document, Laudato Si. “Politics must not be the subject of the economy, nor should the economy be subject to the dictates of an efficiency-driven paradigm of technology.”
He speaks of “political charity” born of the awareness that transcends the individualistic mindset. “Each one of us is fully a person when we are part of a people.”
People are not commodities
In Let Us Dream and other documents he condemns the economy that treats people as commodities. He repeats the example mentioned several times by him: homeless people freeze and most don’t care, the stock market falls and panic follows. Francis stressed that an economy preoccupied with growth and consumption is effectively an economy that sacrifices people. The healthy political conscience the pope is pushing for is based on the awareness of the needs of others and a strong commitment to build an economy that will satisfy those needs.
Pope Francis stressed that an economy preoccupied with growth and consumption is effectively an economy that sacrifices people- Fr Joe Borg
In his address to diplomats, Francis pleads for an economy that “brings life not death, one that is inclusive and not exclusive, humane and not dehumanising, one that cares for the environment and does not despoil it”.
“In the post-COVID world,” Francis writes in Let Us Dream, “neither technocratic managerialism nor populism will suffice. Only a politics rooted in the people, open to the people’s own organisations, will be able to change the future.”
Austen Ivereigh (who made Let Us Dream possible) wrote in Commonweal that the politics that Francis lobbies for are politics that help “people recover the dignity that is theirs; that sees the outcast not as a weapon but as a resource; that comes not to impose,but to serve; that does not divide from above but builds unity from below”.
And what about Malta?
The pope concretises his concept of healthy politics in proposals about the environment, the economy, migration, relationships etc. Are we following his advice? Just a couple of observations can help instigate the discussion.
Are our politics and economy privileging those most in need? The gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in Malta is increasing and the number of people in the risk of poverty or in actual poverty should cause concern.
Instead of initiating a debate about how to spend more on palliative care, the prime minister wants to launch a debate on how to help people commit suicide, aka euthanasia.
While the pope, once more, condemned the attitude of sending migrants back to “detention camps, where they endure torture and human rights violations”, many Maltese are happy that migrants rot in these lagers.
The pope’s condemnation of vaccine nationalism is being heeded by the government, which said that extra vaccines it ordered will be given to countries that need them.
The pope’s repeated cris de cœure for caring about the environment has been and is still being downtrodden. Multimillionaires have spoiled our common heritage to become bigger multimillionaires.
The path to a new kind of politics is long and can be tortuous but it is the only path that can save humanity from itself.