Brazil: Pope asks to see “the face of Jesus” in people forced “to live in misery due to social injustice”

Francisco praises Brazilian Social Week as «path to an ‘Outgoing Church’»

Vatican City, March 20, 2024 (Ecclesia) – The Pope addressed a message to the VI Brazilian Social Week (6th SSB), asking participants to try to see “in those who are forced to live in misery due to social injustices the face of Jesus”.

“Since its first edition in 1991, the Brazilian Social Week has proposed itself as a path towards a ‘Church on the Go’, committed to tearing down the walls of discard and indifference, accompanying the poorest and most deprived of basic rights in their struggle for land, home and work”, highlights Francisco, in the message to the participants of the 6th SSB, sent to the ECCLESIA Agency.

The Pope highlighted that the Social Week of the Catholic Church in Brazil proposes “a new economy, more solidarity, and the revitalization of democratic values”, which help to build a society where there is true popular participation in the Nation’s decision-making processes.

In this context, he still “heartily thanks” the “commitment and promotion”, together with the youth of Brazil, of the ‘Economy of Clara and Francisco’.

The national closing meeting of the 6th Brazilian Social Week, which takes place between today and Friday, takes place in Brasília, with the theme ‘The Brazil we want, the Good Living of the People’, promoted by the Episcopal Pastoral Commission for Sociotransformative Action of National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB).

“Let us try to see in those who are forced to live in misery due to social injustices the face of Jesus who urges us not to remain indifferent, because, as He Himself said: «every time you did this to one of the least of my brothers, it was the Me that you did it!» (Mt 25, 40), asks the Pope.

Francisco also expresses gratitude for “promoting” the call he addressed to the participants of the World Meeting of Popular Movements, in 2014, to respond, and quotes: “A very concrete desire, something that any father, any mother, wishes for their own children; a desire that should be within everyone’s reach, but that today we see, with sadness, increasingly distant from becoming a reality in the lives of most people: land, home and work”.

In the message, the Pope also reveals that he hopes that the ‘Mutirão for life – for land, roof and work’, organically linked to the Social Week, “will produce abundant fruits in favor of a more just society”, in which “fraternity is lived universal and social friendship”, as is the theme of the 2024 Fraternity Campaign, carried out by CNBB during Lent.

‘Fraternity and Social Friendship’ is the theme of the ‘Fraternity Campaign’, which was launched with the motto “You are all brothers and sisters”, from the Gospel of Matthew, on Ash Wednesday, this year on February 14 .

The Pope, who joined the ‘Fraternity Campaign 2024’ and is on the poster launched by CNBB for this edition, recalled the need to extend love to “every living being”, overcoming the “barriers of geography and space”, in a message for the 60th anniversary of this initiative.

Francisco begins his message to the participants of the VI Brazilian Social Week by “assuring them closeness and prayers for the good progress of the meeting and its fruits”, and ends by entrusting “votes and prayers to the intercession of Our Lady of Aparecida, Queen and Patroness of Brazil ”; he grants everyone his blessing “from the heart” and asks “even if they don’t forget to pray” for him.

CB/OC