In 2010, I wrote about Ġanna: “She had to make ends meet with €600 a month. How can one stretch €600 to pay utility bills, other expenses, feed and dress two adults and three children every month? Her visits to the grocery store serve to buy bread and pasta. From time to time, she manages to save a little to do small luxuries like buying ham for the children’s school lunch. When someone gets sick, even a minor thing such as influenza, disaster strikes. It is very difficult to pay the medical bills.”
In 2014, I wrote about Agnes: “She is the mother of four children. Her husband is unemployed. Two of their four children are employed but they are also single mothers. Agnes has to take care of their children as well. One son needs constant vigilance for he is constantly hovering on the precipice of drug addiction. She is expected to solve all the family’s problems, provide for its financial and emotional needs, do all the housework and manage its meagre budget. On top of it all, she has mental and other health problems.”
I remembered these two ladies, fictitious in name but very real in existence, while reading the pope’s homily on Christmas Eve. He urged us to embrace Jesus in the little ones of today, serve Him in the poor and caress Him in the needy.
“On this night of love, may we have only one fear: that of offending God’s love, hurting Him by despising the poor with our indifference.”
Can you replace worn-out clothes?
Are we hurting Him by despising the poor with our indifference to the extent that their increase in numbers is not only ignored, it is even denied? Today, do we have less or more like Ġanna and Agnes?
In the beginning of December, NSO gave us a snapshot of the situation. Unfortunately, though our economy is doing well and although politicians constantly boast of a healthier GDP, there are more people living in the risk of poverty today.
According to these statistics, in 2016, the number of persons at the risk of poverty or social exclusion was 89,302. In 2020, this increased to 100,712. Out of these, 25,644 were materially and socially severely deprived. Thirty thousand cannot afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish or vegetarian equivalent every second day. Eighty-three thousand cannot replace worn-out furniture. Twenty-three thousand cannot replace worn-out clothes.
The increase was registered in all age groups. Those over 65 are the worst hit as 25.5 per cent of them are in this category. Education does make a difference; 64,670 of the poor have a low level of education. But almost 5,000 have a high level of education.
Of greater concern is the data from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) as it shows that the gap between the rich and the poor is ever-widening.
Between 2010 and 2017, only the richest five per cent got better. They increased their share of the country’s wealth by seven per cent. The poorest 50 per cent of the population saw their share diminish by four per cent. These numbers may not be that meaningful and may require translation into common terms. Read Agnes and Ġanna above: that is what poor means.
The face of the poor
It is very easy to get alienated by speaking of statistics and not people; to speak of poverty and not the poor. Pope Francis warns against this risk. In June 2016, he told the members of the UN’s World Food Programme that poverty can only be eradicated if we recognise the faces behind the statistics.
The cause of poverty is a structural one. The dice are loaded against the poor- Fr Joe Borg
“Poverty has a face! It has the face of a child; it has the face of a family; it has the face of people, young and old. It has the face of widespread unemployment and lack of opportunity. It has the face of forced migrations and of empty or destroyed homes.”
To remind us of this, Francis set up the Day of the Poor and not the Day of Poverty, as some mistakenly call it. Perhaps it would be a good idea if the Front kontra l-Faqar, which does sterling work, would change its name to Front Favur il-Fqar, to emphasise what the pope is saying.
Poverty not the fault of the poor
In the 1990s, Adela Cortina, professor of ethics and political philosophy at the University of Valencia, coined the word aporophobia. This refers to the negative attitude towards poor people which sometimes takes the form of disgust or hostility. This happens because people mistakenly believe the myth spun by the neocapitalist classes that poverty is the fault of the poor.
This shifts the blame from society’s unjust structures to the individual poor person. This assumption is a very comfortable one for us who are not poor as it frees us from any responsibility. We can pacify our conscience through the occasional charitable donation.
The cause of poverty is a structural one. The dice are loaded against the poor. To hide these unjust structures, the concept of the so-called trickle-down economy was proposed. Pope Francis lambasted this in a 2015 interview with La Stampa.
“The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. What happens, instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger and the poor keep on waiting.”
Scandalous times
During the general audience of February 12, 2015, Pope Francis said that “The coexistence of wealth and poverty is a scandal, it is a disgrace for humanity”.
Malta is a society where wealth and poverty are on the increase. The rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Are we, therefore, not living in scandalous times?