MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCISCOTO THE ORGANIZERS AND PARTICIPANTS
IN THE 5 to MEETING OF THE FORUM OF PEOPLES INDÍGENEAS
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I wish to express once again my closeness and the Church's commitment to continue walking together. Together to express our conviction that globalization cannot mean uniformism that ignores diversity and imposes a new type of colonialism.
The challenge consists, rather, in creating alternatives from solidarity so that no one feels ignored, but also does not impose their own direction overwhelmingly, considering it the only correct one. On the contrary, we know well that, when diversities articulate and enrich each other, the communion between peoples flourishes and is enlivened. In reality, it is about promoting a development that does not take consumption as a means and an end, but that truly looks after the environment, listens, learns and dignifies. This is integral ecology, in which social justice is combined with the protection of the planet. Only with this humility of spirit can we see the total defeat of hunger and a society based on enduring values, which are not the result of fleeting and biased fashions, but of justice and goodness.
I trust that your work these days is full of abundant fruits, of love for the world that we want to build together and that we wish to deliver to those who come after us as a treasure and not as a heap of waste and remains. Let us pay attention to what benefits us all and that precisely will be what will allow us to pass through this world leaving a furrow of altruism and generosity, without being hurt by earthly immanence, devastated by spiritual emptiness, paralyzed by self-referentiality or saddened by individualism.
With these sentiments, I ask God to bless your communities and those at IFAD who strive to help those who live in the most depressed areas of the planet, but are graced by the beauty that comes from respecting and living with nature, a work that came out of the hands of the Lord.
Thank you very much.
From the Vatican, February 2, 2021
Francisco
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