Intervention of His Eminence Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.
Intervention of Don Mattia Ferrari
Intervention of Micheline Mwendike Kamate
At 12 noon today, at the Holy See Press Office, Via della Conciliazione 54, a press conference was held to present the Fifth Meeting of Popular Movements (21 to 24 October) and the Jubilee Pilgrimage (25 to 26 October).
The speakers were: His Eminence Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development; Don Mattia Ferrari, coordinator of the EMMP (Encuentro Mundial de Movimientos Populares) platform; and Micheline Mwendike Kamate, member of the Popular Movements in Africa.
The following are their interventions:
Intervention of His Eminence Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.
Last week, we met about the Church and the cry of the poor: “I have heard you, I have loved you –Dilexi te”. Today we meet about the poor responding to their enormous challenges and the Church accompanying them – the Popular Movements.
What do the poor want? Pope Leo answers with limpid simplicity: to “lead a more dignified life by developing their abilities and contributing their fair share” (DT 115).
But many fall seriously short of this worthy ideal. An estimated 78% to 85% of the global population lives on less than $20 a day.[1]
Until now, many development efforts have failed because outsiders, even very qualified ones, seem to think that development can occur without the direct involvement of the poor. If the great majority is prevented from developing adequately, then none of the planet’s really huge problems has any hope of being resolved.
St John Paul II rejects “a certain ‘paternalism’ that limit(s) itself to satisfying only the immediate needs of the poor” (DT 87).
Aparecida “insists on the need to consider marginalized communities as subjects … rather than as objects of charity on the part of others… Their experience of poverty gives them the ability to recognize aspects of reality that others cannot see; for this reason, society needs to listen to them. The same holds true for the Church” (DT 100).
Pope Francis, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires and then as Holy Father, listened, welcomed and encouraged them.
Similarly, Pope Leo identifies them: “All those persons who journey, not as individuals, but as a closely-bound community of all and for all, one that refuses to leave the poor and vulnerable behind... ‘Popular’ leaders, then, are those able to involve everyone... They do not shun or fear those young people who have experienced hurt or borne the weight of the cross” (DT 80).
Popular leaders know that solidarity “also means fighting against the structural causes of poverty and inequality; of the lack of work, land and housing; and of the denial of social and labour rights. It means confronting the destructive effects of the empire of money… Solidarity, understood in its deepest sense, is a way of making history, and this is what the popular movements are doing.” (DT 81).
For this reason, when different institutions think about the needs of the poor, it is necessary to “include popular movements and invigorate local, national and international governing structures with that torrent of moral energy that springs from including the excluded in the building of a common destiny” (DT 81).
“Our poor people,” said Mother Teresa, “are great people, are very lovable people, they do not need our pity and sympathy, they need our understanding love. They need our respect; they need that we treat them with dignity” (DT 77).
____________________
[1] Sources include the World Economic Forum and studies by researchers like Max Roser, as well as older analyses (AI-generated).
Intervention of Don Mattia Ferrari
The meeting is a phase in a process initiated in many parts of the world, where the social movements formed by the excluded who gather in order to fight for housing, work, land and food, and to build solidarity and fraternity, began to walk with the Church.
Pope Francis launched the meetings to promote the accompaniment and the collaboration between the Church and popular movements. In the four world meetings, the Pope explained the importance of popular movements and the meaning of their relationship with the Church. These interventions flowed into the Encyclical Fratelli tutti.
These meetings gave rise to a platform, Encuentro Mundial de Movimientos Populares (EMMP), promoted by six popular movements from around the world[1], in the service of relations between the movements and with the Church.
In the first ten years there was the task of helping popular movements to be recognized, by institutions, society and the Church, as subjects, as agents of history together with other social actors.
In this historical moment injustice is increasing, violence against migrants is intensifying, the dictatorship of a deadly economy is tightening, investments are being made in the war economy, and the ecological crisis is worsening. Popular movements and the Church represent the hope for another possible world, founded not on individualism but on justice, solidarity and fraternity. Popular movements today are called above all to promote the relations between themselves, with other social actors, and with the local Churches.
We thank the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, which has accompanied and supported this process from the beginning.
The delegations of representatives of popular movements from all over the world who will come to the new meeting will be accompanied by delegations from the local Churches, with an official mandate. It will be in this way, together, that they will also present themselves at the Audience with Pope Leo XIV. It is a sign of the synodal Church which builds bridges, and the missionary Church who goes out to the peripheries.
The programme involves three main events:
- The meeting will take place from the afternoon of 21 October to 24 October at Spin Time, which is the house of reference for many popular movements, while the audience with Pope Leo will take place in the Paul VI Hall on 23 October at 16.00.
- In the evenings of 22, 23 and 24 October the Festival will be held in Piazza Vittorio, organized with the support of the Municipality of Rome.
- The Jubilee pilgrimage of popular movements, on 25 and 26 October, which will culminate in the Holy Mass of the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and the Participatory Bodies presided over by Pope Leo and celebrated at 10.00 in Saint Peter’s Basilica.
We are preparing for this meeting with the joy of the Gospel. Pope Leo, in Dilexi te, reminds us that the love of the Church towards the poor continues to shine like a beacon of hope in this world that is burning. It is precisely because they feel this love that popular movements walk with the Church.
______________________
[1]Unione de Trabajadores Excluidos (UTEP, Argentina), Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra–La Via Campesina (MST, Brazil), Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica-Movimiento Mundial de Trabajadores Cristianos (HOAC-MMTC, Spain), Slum Dwellers International (SDI, South Africa) and Mediterranea Saving Humans (Italy).
Intervention of Micheline Mwendike Kamate
I was born in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. My country exports minerals that are essential for the global energy transition and produces raw materials for luxury goods, but thousands of Congolese people suffer from food insecurity and other forms of poverty.
The injustice our peoples suffer is the fruit of structural violence which has accumulated over the centuries: colonialism, neocolonialism, the dictatorship of an economy that kills. I began to join popular movements because I felt that I should do my part, together with other people who suffer injustices. We, popular movements, fight for justice and practice solidarity as a way of life. Together we continue to build, with humility and perseverance, a fraternal society and a supportive economy.
The journey is difficult, but we continue to walk hand in hand, knowing that what we live is more beautiful and greater than the difficulties we encounter.
I am grateful to EMMP, because it helps us to build relations between us and with the Church. And we are grateful to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, because it supports the universal Church and the local Churches on this journey.
We are approaching the next meeting with the joy of meeting representatives of the popular movements of many countries in the world, and the local Churches who will accompany them. We want to give the world a message of hope: together, starting from those who suffer injustice and fight against it, we can build another possible world, we can make life beautiful.
Faced with war, injustice, violence, and corruption, does it still make sense to dream of fraternity? We believe so, and we put this dream into practice every day. We do so because we believe in it.
I am here because, at the end of the day, when I realize I am here because, at the end of the day, when I realize the magnitude of my people's problem and the smallness of my contribution and my person, I entrust myself to God, who is and always will be on the side of the poor. And it is He who gives us the strength to fight against injustice. We do our part, with the humility of those who are aware of the magnitude of the problem but who do not give up. The future of humanity, as Pope Francis reminded us, is above all in the hands of the people, in their ability to organize themselves and in their hands that irrigate, with humility and conviction, this process of change. With the joy of knowing that we are accompanied by the Church, we will present ourselves to Pope Leo to thank him and ask him and the Church to continue walking together, taking us by the hand, so that there may truly be a great fraternity, as Jesus dreamed.
