{"id":328974,"date":"2025-10-24T11:14:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/328974\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:14:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:14:19","slug":"pope-popular-movements-must-fill-void-left-by-societys-inhuman-indifference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/328974\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope: Popular movements must fill void left by society\u2019s inhuman indifference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo XIV meets with participants in the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements, and criticizes inhuman social structures that sow death and extreme disparity.<\/p>\n

By Devin Watkins<\/b><\/p>\n

Pope Leo XIV took up the mantle of Pope Leo XIII, on Thursday, as he met with participants in the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements.<\/p>\n

In his address, the Pope reflected at length on the injustices that burden societies across the globe, reframing the \u201cnew things\u201d that his namesake laid out in the Church\u2019s first social encyclical Rerum Novarum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even though the late 19th century saw a time of rapid development through new sources of energy and industrial technologies, Pope Leo XIII focused his attention instead on \u201cthe situation of the poor and the oppressed of that time,\u201d said Pope Leo XIV.<\/p>\n

\"Pope<\/p>\n

\n Pope Leo XIV meeting with participants at the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements \u00a0 (@Vatican Media)\n <\/p>\n

His predecessor, said the Pope, took the side of the poor and denounced the \u201csubmission of the majority to the power of comparatively few\u201d in a form of work that was \u201clittle better than slavery itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n Watch Pope Leo XIV’s address in the original language (Italian)\n <\/p>\n

Pope Leo XIV said popular movements grow out of the peripheries of society, so as to seek justice and find solutions for people dominated by unjust systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I consider most important is that your service be animated by love,\u201d he said. \u201cI know of similar realities and experiences present in other countries, true community spaces full of faith, hope, and especially love, which remains the greatest virtue of all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cpoor Church for the poor,\u201d added the Pope, must walk courageously, prophetically, and joyfully with popular movements, since Jesus has hidden His face in that of the poor.<\/p>\n

Rather than being on the peripheries, the poor \u201care at the center of the Gospel,\u201d affirmed Pope Leo, noting that the Church must decry inequality, which is \u201cthe root of social ills.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Participants<\/p>\n

\n Participants at the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements \u00a0 (@Vatican Media)\n <\/p>\n

As in Pope Leo XIII\u2019s day, exclusion remains the new face of social injustice, said the Pope, lamenting the \u201csystemic arbitrariousness\u201d that sees artificial intelligence in our pockets while millions of people languish in deprivation of their basic human needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cPut simply, bad management generates and increases inequalities with the pretext of progress,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd by not having human dignity at its center, the system fails also in justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pope Leo XIV went on to list several ills that afflict contemporary society, saying the climate crisis represents the clearest example. It the poorest people and countries, he said, that endure extreme meterological events.<\/p>\n

Another aspect of the \u201cnew things\u201d harming society is the yearning that social media creates in the poor, who see the exaltation of falsly exaggerated lifestyles and unbridled consumerism.<\/p>\n

At the same time, digital gambling platforms harness dark patterns to create compulsive dependency and addictive habits based on events outside one\u2019s control.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo also decried the pharmaceutical industry\u2019s promotion of a \u201ccult of physical wellbeing, almost an idolotry of the body, in which the mystery of pain is reduced to something totally inhuman.\u201d<\/p>\n

This attitude leads to dependency on pain medications and deadly drugs such as opioids and fentanyl, especially in the United States, he said.<\/p>\n

\"Pope<\/p>\n

\n Pope Leo XIV meeting with participants at the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements \u00a0 (@Vatican Media)\n <\/p>\n

The Pope pointed out that coltan\u2014which lies at the base of modern technological devices\u2014has led to paramilitary violence and child labor in the poor countries in which it is found, including the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n

\u201cLithium is another example,\u201d he said. \u201cThe competition among the great powers and the large corporations for its extraction represents a grave menace to the sovereignty and the stability of poor states\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lastly, Pope Leo reaffirmed the rights of states to protect their borders, but said they must balance their right to security with the \u201cmoral obligation to provide refuge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEver more inhuman measures are being adopted\u2014even celebrated politically\u2014that treat these \u2018undesirables\u2019 [migrants, ed.] as if they were garbage and not human beings,\u201d he said. \u201cChristianity, on the other hand, refers to the God who is love, who creates us and calls us to live as brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pope Leo XIV then thanked popular movements and civil society for addressing these forms of dehumanization and acting as \u201cchampions of humanity, witnesses to justice, and poets of solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n A gift offered to Pope Leo XIV \u00a0 (@Vatican Media)\n <\/p>\n

Unions and employees\u2019 associations, he said, represent ever-smaller percentages of workers and have been incapable of providing proper protections for vulnerable workers.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo said popular movements are called to work with Christians and governments to fill the void left behind by social institutions of the past, which he said were \u201cnot perfect\u201d but whose collapse have left people \u201cmore vulnerable than before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Church supports your just struggles for land, housing and work,\u201d concluded Pope Leo XIV. \u201cLike my predecessor Francis, I believe that just ways begin from the ground up, from the periphery toward the centre.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI say today: housing, work and land are sacred rights, it is worthwhile to fight for them, and I would like you to hear me say \u2018I am here,\u2019 \u2018I am with you!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pope Leo XIV meets with participants in the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements, and criticizes inhuman social…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":328975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[158013,8142,50,163582,3417,8066,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-328974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-audiences","9":"tag-justice","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pope-leo-xiii","12":"tag-pope-leo-xiv","13":"tag-work","14":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115428855931256699","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}