Cardinal Chomali exposes his cancellation experience and calls young people to humility

The Archbishop of Santiago and Primado de Chile, Cardinal Fernando Chomali, told three stories that reflect the culture of cancellation, and highlighted the need to cultivate humility and self -criticism at a time when distrust and aggressiveness prevail.

He did it by participating in an open meeting with students from the Catholic University of Chile (UC), which took place at the San Joaquín campus and also had voices of professionals and academics.

The activity was intended to find meeting spaces, with dialogue as a transformative tool, in the middle of a society that constantly avoids the confrontation of ideas.

In turn, the Cardenal Fernando He focused on dialogue, explaining that he does not imply renouncing convictions, but be willing to understand the other from his own history and context: “When we stop listening, we also stop learning. Dialogue begins when we recognize that the other has something to tell us and that it can enrich our life.”

“Today it seems that there is no room to make mistakes or for forgiveness. That is a way of making the other invisible. The challenge is to get out of ourselves, always recognize the dignity of the person and bet on humility as a path to resolve conflicts,” he urged.

The personal experience of cancellation: three stories

In that context, the purple told three stories that happened in his passage through the Archdiocese of Concepción, in which he lived the “personal experience of cancellation” and that helped him reflect.

“I arrived in Concepción as Archbishop in 2011 and I found the following panorama: the temples were all on the ground. The earthquake had just happened that was terrible in that area,” he said.

Over time, he discovered that rebuilding buildings could be easier than to rebuild social ties: “When it comes to managing materials, the monies are achieved. But when it comes to agreeing, talking, recognizing the other in their dignity, of asking for forgiveness and forgiveness, things get much more complicated,” he acknowledged. In that context, he listed three stories:

The first was linked to a social project: “In Concepción we made a very beautiful project, a laundry for young people with Down syndrome. It was the only Latin America project and had a lot of media impact. We did not advertise, but it was so wonderful that it generated interest in the media,” he recalled.

But not everyone received it well: “A person on Facebook began to insult me ​​harshly. (…) It turned out that that lady had a laundry a few blocks and felt threatened. I explained that our project was non -profit, financed with benefactors, and that in Concepción there were 700 thousand people, 10 hospitals, 8 thousand beds, millions of sheets and blankets,” that is, there was work for everyone.

The Archbishop’s proposal was that the lady used a person with Down syndrome and that her laundry was a second branch of the beneficial project. “But he went sad, because he did not have the willingness to do so. So I understood that conflicts are often dialogues or wrong,” he observed.

The second is a “more delicate” story, admitted the cardinal: “The Mapuche community members on hunger were imprison feed your family and claim, ”he explained.

The Archbishop decided to help him, although that cost him expensive: “I received it and gave him a job in a home of the Church for young people in a street situation. But I was the object of the worst cancellation: first flat in Concepción for having given work to a person who was prey. I found it serious, because it means that we have lost confidence in the rule of law and, even more serious, we have stopped believing that people can change, ask for forgiveness, ask for forgiveness.

As a third story, Cardinal Chomali presented advice: “I always tell young people: study, study and study. Because ignorance is a source of fanaticism. The most read people are able to clarify, to dialogue. The least read are locked in their structures and impose themselves with violence. And violence today manifests itself in a thousand ways: in networks, in the physical, in the physical, in the physical, in the physical, in the physical, in the physical, in the networks.

Therefore, he insisted on the importance of humility. “A greater knowledge, greater humility; at least knowledge, less humility. We entrust us for fear that the other will take us out of our structures,” he warned.

Finally, he focused on the force that the phenomenon of cancellation has: “The trial today is no longer in court: it is media. And that judgment suspends our own thinking, because we follow what the networks or the media say.”

“We have seen canceled artists without evidence, just for rumors. That logic of destruction has done much bad. “If we start there, we may change the way we link. Otherwise, tomorrow will be too late,” he concluded.

After the exchange, a round of questions was opened that aimed at reflection and talk among the attendees. The organizers of the meeting then headed the workshop “strengthening the dialogue”, which offered young “concrete tools to promote communication and cohesion in the university community.”