At 11:00am today, in the Sala Clementina at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis received in audience a group of people participating in the International Symposium on Pastoral Work in the Streets, organized by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants (Rome, September 13-17, 2015).
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning.
I extend to all of you my cordial welcome, at the conclusion of the International Symposium on Pastoral Work in the Streets, organized by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants. I thank Cardinal Vegliò for his kind words, and above all, I thank him and his team for their work in this pastoral initiative. The scope of these days of study and reflection is to prepare a plan of action in response to the phenomenon of children and women - and their families - who primarily live in the streets. I have great respect for your commitment and care for promoting the dignity of these children and women; for this reason, I encourage you to continue with trust and apostolic zeal.
The realities that you encounter, which at times are very sad, are brought about by indifference, poverty, family and social violence and human trafficking. There is also the pain of marital separation and the birth of children out of wedlock, often destined for a life of wandering. Children and women of the street are not numbers, they are not packages to be exchanged: they are human beings with first names and their own faces, with identities which God has given to each one of them. They are children of God like us, equal to us, with the same rights as we have.
No child decides on his own to live in the streets. Unfortunately, even in the modern, globalized world, many children are robbed of their childhoods, of their rights, of their futures. The lack of laws and of adequate facilities aggravates their state of privation: lacking real families, lacking education and health care. Every abandoned child, every child who is forced to live in the streets, becomes prey to criminal organizations; this is a cry that rises up to God, Who has created man and woman in his own image; this is a cry of accusation against a social system that for decades has been criticized, yet in which we find it difficult to to change the criteria for justice.
It is a preoccupation to see increasing numbers of young girls and women who are forced to earn a living on the streets, selling their bodies, exploited by criminal organizations and sometimes by parents and family members. Such realities are a source of shame for our societies which pride themselves on being modern and having reached high levels of culture and development. Widespread corruption and the pursuit of profit at all costs deprive innocent people and the weak of the possibility of a dignified existence, feed into the crime of trafficking and other injustices which weigh upon their shoulders. No one can remain idle in the face of the urgent need to protect the dignity of women who are threatened by cultural and economic factors!
I ask you please, to not give up in the face of difficulties due to the challenge that your convictions necessitate, nourished by your faith in Christ, who demonstrated even to the point of death on the cross, the preferential love of God the Father for the weak and the marginalized. The Church cannot remain silent, ecclesiastical institutions cannot close their eyes to the nefarious situation of children and women of the street. It is important that we employ all the different expressions of the Christian community in various countries in order to remove all causes which force a woman or a child to live in the streets or to make a living in the streets. We can never avoid proclaiming to all people, especially to the weak and the disadvantaged, the goodness and the tenderness of God, the merciful Father. Mercy is the supreme act with which God comes to meet us, the path that opens the heart to the hope of being loved at all times.
Dear brothers and sisters, I wish you a fruitful mission in your countries, exercising pastoral and spiritual care for the freedom of the most fragile and exploited: a fruitful mission for the promotion and the safekeeping of their identity and dignity. I entrust you and your service to Mary, the Mother of Mercy; may the sweetness of her gaze accompany the commitment and the intentions of all those who care for children and women in the streets. With all my heart, I invoke the Lord's blessing upon all of you.
And now I invite you to pray to Our Lady and to ask her to embrace these children who live in the streets, these women ... they are suffering so much. Our Lady's caress: we all need mothering. Let us pray to Our Lady.
Hail Mary ....
Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for the meeting with the International Symposium
on Pastoral Work in the Streets
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning.
I extend to all of you my cordial welcome, at the conclusion of the International Symposium on Pastoral Work in the Streets, organized by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants. I thank Cardinal Vegliò for his kind words, and above all, I thank him and his team for their work in this pastoral initiative. The scope of these days of study and reflection is to prepare a plan of action in response to the phenomenon of children and women - and their families - who primarily live in the streets. I have great respect for your commitment and care for promoting the dignity of these children and women; for this reason, I encourage you to continue with trust and apostolic zeal.
The realities that you encounter, which at times are very sad, are brought about by indifference, poverty, family and social violence and human trafficking. There is also the pain of marital separation and the birth of children out of wedlock, often destined for a life of wandering. Children and women of the street are not numbers, they are not packages to be exchanged: they are human beings with first names and their own faces, with identities which God has given to each one of them. They are children of God like us, equal to us, with the same rights as we have.
No child decides on his own to live in the streets. Unfortunately, even in the modern, globalized world, many children are robbed of their childhoods, of their rights, of their futures. The lack of laws and of adequate facilities aggravates their state of privation: lacking real families, lacking education and health care. Every abandoned child, every child who is forced to live in the streets, becomes prey to criminal organizations; this is a cry that rises up to God, Who has created man and woman in his own image; this is a cry of accusation against a social system that for decades has been criticized, yet in which we find it difficult to to change the criteria for justice.
It is a preoccupation to see increasing numbers of young girls and women who are forced to earn a living on the streets, selling their bodies, exploited by criminal organizations and sometimes by parents and family members. Such realities are a source of shame for our societies which pride themselves on being modern and having reached high levels of culture and development. Widespread corruption and the pursuit of profit at all costs deprive innocent people and the weak of the possibility of a dignified existence, feed into the crime of trafficking and other injustices which weigh upon their shoulders. No one can remain idle in the face of the urgent need to protect the dignity of women who are threatened by cultural and economic factors!
I ask you please, to not give up in the face of difficulties due to the challenge that your convictions necessitate, nourished by your faith in Christ, who demonstrated even to the point of death on the cross, the preferential love of God the Father for the weak and the marginalized. The Church cannot remain silent, ecclesiastical institutions cannot close their eyes to the nefarious situation of children and women of the street. It is important that we employ all the different expressions of the Christian community in various countries in order to remove all causes which force a woman or a child to live in the streets or to make a living in the streets. We can never avoid proclaiming to all people, especially to the weak and the disadvantaged, the goodness and the tenderness of God, the merciful Father. Mercy is the supreme act with which God comes to meet us, the path that opens the heart to the hope of being loved at all times.
Dear brothers and sisters, I wish you a fruitful mission in your countries, exercising pastoral and spiritual care for the freedom of the most fragile and exploited: a fruitful mission for the promotion and the safekeeping of their identity and dignity. I entrust you and your service to Mary, the Mother of Mercy; may the sweetness of her gaze accompany the commitment and the intentions of all those who care for children and women in the streets. With all my heart, I invoke the Lord's blessing upon all of you.
And now I invite you to pray to Our Lady and to ask her to embrace these children who live in the streets, these women ... they are suffering so much. Our Lady's caress: we all need mothering. Let us pray to Our Lady.
Hail Mary ....
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