VATICAN CITY — Poverty is the result of people’s selfishness; it is not “fate” or the fault of the poor, Pope Francis said.
“Unless we choose to become poor in passing riches, worldly power and vanity, we will never be able to give our lives in love; we will live a fragmented existence, full of good intentions but ineffective for transforming the world,” the pope said in a message for the World Day of the Poor.
“We need, therefore, to open ourselves decisively to the grace of Christ, which can make us witnesses of his boundless charity and restore credibility to our presence in the world,” the pope said in the message dated June 13, the feast of St. Anthony of Padua, patron saint of the poor.
The World Day of the Poor – marked each year on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time – will be celebrated Nov. 14 this year and focuses on a verse, “The poor you will always have with you” (Mk 14:7).
However, people must never become indifferent knowing there will always be poverty in the world and among their neighbors, the pope said.
Jesus always sides with the poor and he “shares their lot,” he said.
“This is a powerful lesson for his disciples in every age,” he said, because it calls people to directly engage in “a mutual sharing of life” with the poor, who are not “outside our communities, but brothers and sisters whose sufferings we should share in an effort to alleviate their difficulties and marginalization, restore their lost dignity and ensure their necessary social inclusion.”
“Mutual sharing generates fraternity” that is enduring, it strengthens solidarity and it lays the necessary foundations for achieving justice, he said. Almsgiving, on the other hand, is only occasional and “risks gratifying those who perform it and can prove demeaning for those who receive it.”
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