Pope calls for an end to ‘arrogance of the powerful’
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WISHING for a year better than 2015, Pope Francis yesterday called for an end to the “arrogance of the powerful” that relegates the weak to the outskirts of society, and to the “false neutrality” toward conflicts, hunger and persecution that triggers refugee exoduses.
In his New Year’s homily, Francis emphasized the need to “let ourselves be reborn, to overcome the indifference which blocks solidarity, and to leave behind the false neutrality which prevents sharing.”
After celebrating Mass, the pope came to the window of a Vatican palazzo overlooking St Peter’s Square to offer new year’s wishes to a crowd of tens of thousands cheering below.
“At the start of the year, it’s lovely to exchange wishes. Let’s renew, to one another, the desire that awaits us is a little better” than what last year brought, Francis said. “It is, after all, a sign of the hope that animates us and invites us all to believe in life.”
“We know, however, that with the new year, everything won’t change and that many of yesterday’s problems will also remain tomorrow,” the pope said, adding that he was making a “wish sustained by a real hope.”
As he did in his homily earlier in St Peter’s Basilica, the pope issued a caution that “the enemy of peace isn’t only war, but also indifference”, and he decried “barriers, suspicions, fears and closures” toward others.
In the New Year’s homily in St Peter’s, he had reflected on the “countless forms of injustice and violence which daily wound our human family”.
“Sometimes we ask ourselves how it is possible that human injustice persists unabated, and that the arrogance of the powerful continues to demean the weak, relegating them to the most squalid outskirts of our world. We ask how long human evil will continue to sow violence and hatred in our world, reaping innocent victims.”
Francis cited no country, or conflict. But his words clearly evoked images of the refugees and migrants, more than 1 million of whom flooded into Europe from Africa, the Middle East and Asia in 2015, on dangerous sea or overland journeys.
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