The Pope cried this Friday against the “business” of the wars, while condemning the attitudes of rejection and “indifference” towards migrants and the poor, upon receiving some of the participants of the third edition of the third edition of the third edition of the Vatican World Meeting on Human Fraternity.
Among those present there was also a group of Nobel Peace Awards, such as Iraqi activist Nadia Murad, the American Jody Williams, Liberian Leymah Gbowee, the Yemeni Tawakkol Karman, Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, Ukrainian lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk, the journalist Filipina Maria Ressa and the doctor Congolese Denis Mukwege.
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Before them, the Pontiff reflected on the need for fraternity and reconciliation in a world where the wars business “destroy the lives of young people forced to wield weapons.”
The world “values more than people”
In his speech, he cried out for the situation of many “despised, imprisoned and rejected migrants” who seek salvation and hope and “only find walls and indifference.” He also denounced that in many occasions the poor are “guilty of their poverty, forgotten and discarded, in a world that values more the benefit than to people.”
He also showed that there is a “hyperconnected life in which loneliness corrodes social ties and makes us strange to ourselves.”
Given all these injustices, Leo XIV said that “the answer cannot be silence.”
“You are the answer, with your presence, your commitment and courage. The answer is to choose a different direction of life, growth, development,” he said in the speech he delivered in the Apostolic Palace.
Alliance founded not on power, but on care
Similarly, he called to create a broad “alliance of the human”, which is founded “not on power, but on care; not to benefit, but in the gift; not in suspicion, but in trust.”
“Care, gift and trust are not virtues for free time: they are pillars of an economy that does not kill, but intensifies and expands participation in life,” he said.
Thus, the Holy Father invited to recognize that the other is a “brother or a sister”, which in practice means “free us from fiction from believing isolated individuals or the logic of forming relationships only by self -interest.”
Planet marked by conflicts and divisions
The Pope said the planet is marked “by conflicts and divisions”, and claimed that the participants of this new edition of the World Meeting on Human Fraternity are “united by a strong and brave not to war and for a yes to peace and fraternity.”
Leo XIV cited the encyclical of his predecessor Pope Francis, All brothers, to reiterate that social friendship and universal fraternity necessarily require the “recognition of the value of each human person, always and everywhere.”
He also stressed that Pope Francis taught that “war is not the right way to get out of conflicts.”
The Holy Father connected his reflections with the biblical account of Abel’s murder at the hands of his brother Cain and reflected on how this fraternal relationship ended up being immediately “dramatically conflictive.”
However, he pointed out that this first homicide “should not lead us to conclude: ‘It has always been so.”
“Cain’s violence cannot be tolerated as normal,” he said below.
For the Pope, the divine question addressed to the culprit that tells Genesis is intrinsic to “our vocation” and the “canon of justice.” “God does not come from Abel in Cain, but poses a question that accompanies all the path of history,” he said.
“Beyond those fraternities that recognize only the like and reject the different”
In this way, he emphasized that the great spiritual traditions and the maturation of critical thinking allow us to go “beyond blood or ethnic ties, beyond those fraternities that recognize only the like and reject the different.”
For the Holy Father it is also interesting that in the Bible, as the scientific exegesis has revealed, it is the most recent and mature texts that narrate a “fraternity that transcends the ethnic limits of the people of God and that is founded in common humanity.”
“The stories of creation and genealogies testify that all peoples, including enemies, have the same origin, and that the earth, with their assets, is for everyone, not only for some,” he explained.
He also stressed that fraternity is the most authentic name of closeness and that for believers it means “recognize the mystery”, that is, the very image of God “in the face of the poor, of the refugee and even the adversary.”
In this way, he urged them to identify roads, local and international, which develop “new forms of social charity, alliances between knowledge and solidarity between generations.”
Not only list rights but also include actions
On the other hand, he asked “popular paths, which also include the poor, not as aid recipients, but as subjects of discernment and word.”
The Holy Father encouraged them to continue in this work of “silent planting”, of which, he said, a “participatory process on the human and fraternity can be born, which is not limited to enumerating rights, but also includes concrete actions and motivations that make us different in everyday life.”
15 thematic tables
The organizers of the third edition of the World Meeting on Human Fraternity They have structured this international event, promoted by the Basilica of San Pedro on September 12 and 13, around 15 thematic tables.
These are dialogue spaces that will work as laboratories to confront ideas around several topics, such as the world of information; the environment and sustainability; the economy and the scope of finance and artificial intelligence.
One night that will go down in history
In addition, in this context the Plaza de San Pedro will host this Saturday a free concert and open to the general public that promises to mark a before and after in the relationship between culture, faith and spectacle.
Under the name of Grace for the World, The Vatican Square will become an outdoor stage that will bring together international artists such as Karol G, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and other singers such as Pharrell Williams, John Legend, Teddy Swims, Jelly Roll, Bambam and Angélique Kidjo.
This evening will be broadcast live through Disney+, Hulu and ABC News Live, allowing millions of spectators to follow the event in real time.
The concert will also gather the voices of an international choir of 250 people, including those of the Diocese choir of Rome. The whole set will be orchestrated by Adam Blackstone, world -renowned music producer.
Light and sound show with 3,000 drones
But the show will go beyond music. The company Nova Sky Stories will present a visual creation that will illuminate the sky of Rome with a choreography of more than 3,000 drones, inspired by the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. This innovative staging will turn the night into a true living fresco of sounds and lights, an unprecedented sensory experience in the heart of Christianity, the Vatican announced.
Victoria Cardiel
Victoria Cardiel is a journalist specialized in social and religious information issues. Since 2013, he has covered all the news of the Vatican for various media, such as the Spanish news agency Europa Press, or the weekly of the Archdiocese of Madrid, Alfa and Omega.