By ACBC and CNS
Professing faith in God as the creator of all human beings, or even simply recognising that all people possess an inherent dignity, has concrete consequences for how people should treat one another and make decisions in politics, economics and social life, Pope Francis wrote.
“Human beings have the same inviolable dignity in every age of history and no one can consider himself or herself authorised by particular situations to deny this conviction or to act against it,” the Holy Father wrote in his encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship.
Pope Francis signed the encyclical on 3 October after celebrating Mass at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi, and the Vatican released the more than 40,000-word text the next day.
The Holy Father had been rumoured to be writing an encyclical on nonviolence; and, once the COVID-19 pandemic struck, many expected a document exploring in depth his repeated pleas for the world to recognise the inequalities and injustices laid bare by the pandemic and adopt corrective economic, political and social policies.
Fratelli Tutti combines those two elements but does so in the framework set by the document on human fraternity and interreligious dialogue that he and Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of al-Ashar Mosque in Cairo, Egypt, signed in 2019.
In fact, in the new document Pope Francis wrote that he was “encouraged” by his dialogue with the Muslim leader and by their joint statement that “God has created all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity, and has called them to live together as brothers and sisters.”
The encyclical takes its title from Saint Francis of Assisi and is inspired by his “fraternal openness,” which, the pontiff said, calls on people “to acknowledge, appreciate and love each person, regardless of physical proximity, regardless of where he or she was born or lives.”
The title, which literally means “all brothers and sisters” or “all brothers,” are the words with which St Francis “addressed his brothers and sisters and proposed to them a way of life marked by the flavour of the Gospel,” His Holiness wrote.
That flavour, explained throughout the document, involves welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, listening to and giving a hand up to the poor, defending the rights of all and ensuring that each person, at every stage of life, is valued and invited to contribute to the community. It also means supporting public policies that do so on a larger scale.
A world that looks beyond a global pandemic with no roadmap can find one in Pope Francis’ new encyclical, which Archbishop Mark Coleridge says: “is not just for believers but for the entire human family”.
“It is a vision of the dignity of every human being from which flows the call to build a new culture of fraternity and dialogue,” said Archbishop Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
“In his previous encyclical Laudato Si’ (Praise Be to You), Pope Francis spoke of care for our common home. Here he speaks of care for each other, the family that dwells together in the common home.”
Pope Francis writes early in the encyclical: “It is my desire that, in this our time, by acknowledging the dignity of each human person, we can contribute to the rebirth of a universal aspiration to fraternity.
“Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travellers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all.”
The Supreme Pontiff started work on the encyclical before COVID-19 struck, stating that the need for local, national and international solidarity has become even more important now. The pandemic has created in many people a sense of the interdependence of communities and the fragility of human beings left to themselves.
“Once this health crisis passes, our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egotistic self-preservation,” Pope Francis writes.
“God willing, after all this, we will think no longer in terms of ‘them’ and ‘those’, but only ‘us’.”
Archbishop Coleridge said the current divisions and conflicts all around were a road to nowhere.
“The Holy Father speaks of ideologies that seek to divide rather than unite, policies that value certain people over others and economic systems that prioritise profit over people and the planet,” he explained.
Archbishop Coleridge noted that many of those whom Pope Francis describes as often undervalued or treated inequitably – women, older people, unborn children, people who are trafficked, Indigenous peoples, people with disability, migrants and refugees – are similarly those left on the margin or cast aside in Australia.
“In this country we may be tempted to think that the Holy Father is talking about elsewhere, but he’s not. True, he’s talking about the whole world – but he’s also talking about us,” the archbishop said.
“Pope Francis offers a grand yet simple vision of human interconnectedness. We’re all connected to each other in ways we scarcely imagine. Our task now is to work out what this means in practice as we look beyond the pandemic.
“In what he offers in this letter, the Pope can help with that. It’s impassioned yet tender, visionary yet practical, radical yet reasonable.”
Read “Fratelli Tutti” and access other material at: www.catholic.org.au/fratellitutti