ROME – As a series of elections have recently taken place, including in the European Parliament, the United Kingdom, Iran and France, Pope Francis on Sunday lamented the current state of democratic affairs around the world, calling for greater inclusion and a system in which no one is marginalized.
Addressing participants in the 50th Italian Catholic Social Week in Trieste, organized by the Italian Bishops’ Conference and dedicated to promoting the Church’s social agenda, the pope said July 7: “It is evident that in today’s world democracy, let’s tell the truth, is not in good health.”
This disease, he said, is based on a definition of democracy given by Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo, a renowned Italian priest who launched Catholic Social Week in 1907, and who defined democracy as “that civil order in which all social, legal and economic forces, in the fullness of their hierarchical development, cooperate properly for the common good, arriving in the final result at the predominant advantage of the lower classes.”
The decline of democracy, the Pope said, is worrying for the world because the good of humanity is at risk.
“Everyone should feel part of a community project; no one should feel useless,” he said, stressing the need to pay special attention to the poor and marginalized.
“Certain forms of social protection that do not recognize the dignity of the person” are not acceptable, he said, affirming that contempt for human dignity “is the enemy of democracy, the enemy of love of one’s neighbor.”
“Some forms of social protection that do not recognize the dignity of people are social hypocrisy. Let us not forget this. And what is behind this distance from social reality? There is indifference, and indifference is a cancer of democracy, a non-participation,” he said.
He was speaking at the closing session of the event, held July 3-7, which was opened by Italian President Sergio Mattarella and attracted many other leading civil and church authorities, including Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, president of the powerful Italian bishops’ conference.
After his arrival in Trieste, Pope Francis met with some 1,200 delegates from dioceses and associations from all over Italy on the occasion of the closing of the Catholic Social Week. He reflected on the theme of the event: “At the heart of democracy: participating between history and future.”
He compared the current crisis of democracy to “a wounded heart”, describing it as a “heart attack” in which “we must also be concerned about the different forms of social exclusion”.
“Every time someone is marginalized, the whole body of society suffers,” he said, lamenting the prevalence of what he has often called a culture of waste, which he said leaves no room for the poor, the unborn, the sick and frail, the elderly or children.
In this system, “power becomes self-referential – it is a terrible disease – incapable of listening and serving the people,” he said.
Quoting former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who was kidnapped and assassinated by left-wing terrorists in 1978, the Pope said: “A state is not truly a democracy if it is not at the service of man, if it does not have as its supreme goal the dignity, freedom and autonomy of the human person, if it does not respect the social formations in which the human person develops freely and in which he integrates his own personality.”
Democracy is more than voting, but voting is important, Pope Francis said, and he expressed concern about the decline in the number of citizens choosing to vote in elections.
Ironically, the pope’s comments come on the same day that France held a second round of elections with a near-record turnout of around 60%.
Pope Francis insisted on the need to create the conditions for everyone to be able to participate, saying that this participation must be facilitated among young people, “also in a critical sense with regard to ideological and populist temptations.”
He praised the role that Christians can play in promoting European cultural and social development through dialogue with civil and political institutions, but warned against any form of ideology.
“By enlightening each other and freeing ourselves from the dross of ideology, we can begin a common reflection, particularly on issues related to human life and the dignity of the person,” he said, adding: “Ideologies are seductive… they seduce, but they lead you to deny yourself.”
Pope Francis has stressed the importance of participation in a healthy democracy, saying: “In social life it is so necessary to heal hearts… And for this it is necessary to exercise one’s creativity.”
He highlighted various areas in which he believed the action of the Holy Spirit can be observed in democratic societies, and urged participants to reflect on moments when space is made for the inclusion of persons with disabilities, when local leaders promote birth rates, job opportunities, education, accessible housing and the integration of migrants and refugees.
“The heart of politics is participation. And that’s what participation allows, to take care of the whole; not just charity… no, the whole!” he said, adding that it takes courage “to see ourselves as a people and not as my clan.”
“Attention to the people is not populism,” but something different, he said, and urged participants not to settle for easy solutions to societal problems.
“It is our duty not to manipulate the word democracy or distort it with empty titles, capable of justifying any action. Democracy is not an empty box, but it is linked to the values of the person, of fraternity and also of integral ecology,” he said.
Catholics have a key role to play in facilitating active participation and fostering inclusion, he said, saying: “We must be a voice, a voice that denounces and proposes in a society that is often voiceless and where too many people have no voice.”
This is, he said, “a form of charity that allows politics to assume its responsibilities and escape polarizations, those polarizations that impoverish and do not help to understand and face challenges.”
Everyone is called to this political charity, he said, and he encouraged more people to get involved, including young people, in organizing projects and promoting various initiatives.
After his speech, Pope Francis met briefly with various ecumenical representatives and some academics, as well as a handful of migrants, refugees and people with disabilities, before celebrating a public Mass officially closing Catholic Social Week.
During the Mass, attended by nearly 100 bishops, some 260 priests and about 8,500 people from Italy and neighboring countries, the pope stressed that Jesus, in the day’s Gospel, had said that no prophet was welcome in his own country, and that when he spoke to his own community he “was a cause of scandal to them.”
He emphasized the word scandal, saying that the scandal of Jesus was that he was not a powerful God who satisfied every desire, but a humble and seemingly weak God who died a painful death and who demands that his followers overcome selfishness.
Jesus represents an “uncomfortable” God, he said, asserting that in the face of the many political and social challenges of modern society, “what we need today is precisely that: the scandal of faith.”
“It is not a question of a religiosity closed in on itself, which looks to heaven without worrying about what happens on earth and which celebrates the liturgies in the temple but forgets the dust that flies in our streets. Rather, we need the scandal of faith, a faith rooted in the God made man and therefore a human faith… which touches the lives of people, which heals broken hearts, which becomes a leaven of hope and a seed of a new world.”
This faith, he said, is not afraid to touch the wounds of society and is able to overcome mediocrity, thus becoming “a thorn in the flesh of a society often anesthetized and dizzy by consumerism.”
“It is above all a faith that disrupts the calculations of human selfishness, that denounces evil, that points out injustices, that disrupts the stratagems of those who, in the shadow of power, play with the lives of the weak,” he said.
Francis urged Christians to be scandalized by the plight of the poor, migrants and prisoners, as well as by various social injustices.
People were scandalized by Jesus’ contact with human fragility and woundedness, and he was condemned for it, but he remained steadfast in his commitment to conveying God’s love and compassion, he said.
“Likewise, we Christians are called to be prophets and witnesses of the Kingdom of God, in every situation in which we live, in every place where we live,” he said.
Calling the city of Trieste, which lies on Italy’s border with Slovenia and was briefly an Anglo-American protectorate after World War II, a “crossroads of peoples and cultures,” he encouraged residents to dream of “a new civilization based on peace and fraternity.”
“Let us not be scandalized by Jesus, but on the contrary let us be indignant at all these situations where life is degraded, wounded, killed; let us carry the prophecy of the Gospel in our flesh, with our choices even before our words,” he said.
After the Mass, Pope Francis delivered his traditional midday Angelus address and thanked the organizers for holding Catholic Social Week.
He challenged the people of Trieste and the surrounding area to “combine openness and stability, hospitality and identity,” telling them: “You have what it takes.”
“As Christians, we have the Gospel, which gives meaning and hope to our lives; and as citizens, you have the Constitution, a reliable compass for the path of democracy,” he said.
Francis concluded by telling the participants to move forward “without fear, open and firm in human and Christian values, welcoming but without compromising human dignity.”
“This is not something you can play around with,” he said, and prayed for countries at war, including Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Myanmar and Sudan.
