Homeless focus
L’Osservatore Romano’s August 5 edition devoted its main front-page story to the plight of the homeless.
“Persons without a fixed abode, homeless, clochards, those without a roof on their head.... Pope Francis described them as euphemisms, expressions that hide the injustice of those who suffer famine, misery, margination and abandonment.
Those who have no roof on their heads are often sidelined by society and become ‘invisible’. Across the globe, the human and humanitarian drama of those without a fixed residence has numbers that cause one to shudder: 2020 statistics reveal that over 150 million people in the world are without a roof over their heads.”
Not a monolith
In a meeting with the Jesuits in Canada, Pope Francis said:
“The vision of the doctrine of the Church as monolithic, to be defended without nuance, is wrong. That is why it is important to have respect for tradition, the authentic one. Someone once said that tradition is the living memory of believers. Traditionalism instead is the dead life of our believers. Tradition is the life of those who have gone before us and who go on.
Traditionalism is their dead memory. From root to fruit, in short, that is the way. We must take the origin as a reference, not a particular historical experience taken as a perpetual model, as if we had to stop there. ‘Yesterday it was done like this’ becomes ‘it always has been done like this’. But this is a paganism of thought!”
Pope’s prayer intention
In his prayer intention for August, Pope Francis invites Catholics to pray for small businesses, so that in the middle of economic and social crisis, they find ways to continue operating, and serving their communities. “Stores, workshops, cleaning businesses, transportation businesses, and so many others. The ones that don’t appear on the world’s richest and most powerful lists, and despite the difficulties, create jobs, fulfilling their social responsibility,’ the pope said.
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)