If you can eat a good breakfast, don’t think that everyone can do the same. And if you joined the ‘let’s keep silent’ brigade but still consider yourself to be a good Christian, think again.

• Last Christmas, in the morning, a 12-year-old boy came to our parish church asking for food for himself and for his family.

• A teacher told me that he noticed a secondary school student who spent all the time of the lunch break in the toilet. He discovered that the student was doing this as he had no lunch with him.

• A young foreigner rented a balcony to live in. It was not even watertight and this was problematic in winter. His friend was luckier as he rented the space under the stairs.

In many people’s minds, Christianity has been unfortunately reduced to just a moral system. To make matters worse, this moral system was degraded to an almost pathological fixation with sexual sins.

For centuries, this system would condemn one to eternal hell for masturbating but gave thumbs up to slavery. Christianity is fantastically beautiful because it is stratospherically higher than this lowly caricature etched in the subconscious of many people.

Christianity is a way of being before it becomes a way of acting. Christians share in the DNA of God who is Love. It is the state of being gratefully conscious that one is created in the image and likeness of this God; and, more than that, of being adopted as the children of God.

This belief has practical and political consequences. As children of God, humans find fulfilment only if they behave as siblings not enemies. Humans can only realise their potential to the full if they live in solidarity with others since solidarity is not just a slogan but a constitutive element of being human.

Christians espouse the antithesis of Cain’s blasphemy that he was not his brother’s keeper. Nelson Mandela explained this succinctly but perfectly: “As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest.” Christians, because of the realisation of the privilege of being their brother’s and sister’s keepers, are challenged to live these words.

I differ from Mandela on one point only. As I said in a recent intervention in parliament in the context of a conference on social justice, February 23, I prefer to emulate Pope Francis and speak of the poor rather than of poverty. The poor have a face and a beating heart while poverty is a concept.

Will our Christian conscience let us truly rest when we consider the state of the poor and the injustice in our country?

According to NSO’s report just published, in 2022 there were close to 75,000 people who were deprived or severely deprived materially or socially.

There are 177,000 people who cannot pay for a one week’s annual holiday; 79,000 cannot replace worn-out furniture; some 28,000 cannot replace worn-out clothes and the same number cannot afford to have two pairs of properly fitting shoes; close to 39,000 cannot afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish or vegetarian equivalent every second day and the same number cannot keep their home adequately warm in winter.

The rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor- Fr Joe Borg

While the economy thrives, the number of persons at the risk of poverty and social exclusion increases. It was almost 70,000 in 2011 but it has dramatically  mushroomed to 103,000 in 2021. The gap between the 20 per cent bracket of highest earners and the lowest 20 per cent earners is increasing. In 2011, the high earners were making four times as much as the low earners. Now they are making five times as much.

As I said in my intervention in parliament, the lasting solution does not lie in the improvement of the system of social benefits and in giving charity – though, quite naturally, both help a lot. The solution lies in moving away from the right-wing, capitalist government policies that have dominated our country during the last decade. As a result, the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor: either Maltese citizens or exploited imported foreigners.

Catholic organisations are well known for their generous charity work. The lives of thousands would be worse off were it not for this generosity. All those involved deserve praise and gratitude. But this is only a partial solution since poverty is alleviated but not eradicated by charity.

In an April 2020 homily, Pope Francis said that the vast majority of the poor are victims of economic and of financial policies. “There is a lot of money in the hands of a few and so much poverty in those of many… and this is the poverty of so many victims of the structural injustice in the global economy,” he said.

Consequently, if the Church and most of its organisations are only active in charity work, however admirable, they risk cleaning cobwebs without eliminating spiders; thus, unwittingly perpetuating the structures of sin. Prophetic denunciation of the unjust structures causing poverty as well as dynamic consciousness-raising activism should be an essential part of the daily striving of the Church and its organisations.

This is sorely lacking in the Church in Malta. I am afraid that, today, too many Church organisations and personnel – at the different levels of the ecclesiastical food chain – are betraying their duty of prophetic denunciation and activism. They forget that it is the government who owes them a ‘thank you’, not vice versa.

They are not only executing work which is the government’s responsibility but are doing it better and in more cost-effective ways. Unfortunately, Church organisations and personnel, their mouths, stuffed with the pieces of silver – albeit more than 30 – handed out by the government, fell silent.

Instead of courageously heralding a society built on dignity and justice they are shamefully promoting the new age of serfdom.

The children of God demand justice not handouts. Till then, Christians truly cannot rest.