Last week prominent people were busy in Europe, in Australia and in South America. In two continents they left the air foetid. In the other it was fresh.
Europe, a nation whose prosperity was built on the remission of its debt, and which rescued its own banks, condemned the already dispirited of another nation to limitless penury. And all in defence of economic orthodoxy. The air where the finance ministers met was indeed foetid.
In Australia it was no less so. Ministers contributed to environmental degradation and economic decline by backing coal mines and their sponsors and putting out of work people working in renewable energy.
In such an atmosphere the Pope’s visit to Latin America came as a breath of fresh air. After issuing his Encyclical on the environment he was with his own people, sharing a common language with the poor who battled for survival in unequal societies. In two engagements in Bolivia he focused on what matters.
The first was his visit to the Palmasola jail. Built for 800 prisoners it holds 5000, of whom more than three quarters are still awaiting trial. Prisoners who met the Pope told him that bribery, drug-dealing and violence are rife.
What mattered to the Pope was the people held there. He was clearly delighted to share their company and to speak to them in their simple and earthy language. He shared with them his own frailties, his enthusiasm for faith, his empathy with their pain on separation from families, their anger and fear at the conditions in the jail and their tenacious hope for something better. He nurtured their hope and their generosity.
In his speech to the grassroots community groups, he also showed he knew intimately their struggle to live. He encouraged them to keep hope alive and to work together. But here he also invited them to look at the wider forces that made for a sour world, and spoke urgently of the need to address them. It is worth quoting from his speech at length to show its directness and passion.
Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home. Today, the scientific community realises what the poor have long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea – one of the first theologians of the Church – called 'the dung of the devil'. An unfettered pursuit of money rules. This is the 'dung of the devil'. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home, sister and mother earth.
This paragraph introduced the themes of his speech. Reading it after having to hold one’s nose in the two other continents is to breathe fresh and bracing air. In the body of his talk Pope Francis discussed what needed to be done:
The first task is to put the economy at the service of peoples. Human beings and nature must not be at the service of money. Let us say NO to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth.
The economy should not be a mechanism for accumulating goods, but rather the proper administration of our common home.
The economy should serve human beings and nature. The Pope does not back particular economic frameworks. But he insists that all must be directed to the common good, so ensuring a decent life for the poor and respect for the environment.
This focus makes it clear how prissy the debate about the authority of the Encyclical is. It leaves space for difference about how to regulate the economy. But the urgency of the need for change and the obligation of people individually and in their associations, including businesses, to serve the common good and so especially the poor, are central to Christian faith, not simply to church teaching. On that the Pope is adamant.
Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a commandment. It is about giving to the poor and to peoples what is theirs by right. The universal destination of goods is not a figure of speech found in the Church’s social teaching. It is a reality prior to private property. Property, especially when it affects natural resources, must always serve the needs of peoples.
Pope Francis recognises that any structures built on these principles will require personal conversion to be sustained. That is why he speaks with the poor about the importance of their own commitments. He finally appeals over the head of finance ministers and governments to people to struggle for an order that will bless both the natural world and the poor of the world.
We cannot allow certain interests – interests which are global but not universal – to take over, to dominate states and international organisations, and to continue destroying creation. People and their movements are called to cry out, to mobilise and to demand – peacefully, but firmly – that appropriate and urgently-needed measures be taken. I ask you, in the name of God, to defend Mother Earth.
Compared to the waterboarding of the Greek people and the coal dusting of the Australian people, the Pope’s discourse may lack something in the power to suffocate. But how refreshing it is to breathe fresh air.
Andrew Hamilton is a consulting editor of Eureka Street.