At noon today (6:00am EDT), in the Clementine Hall at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience the members of the Italian National Association of Mutilated Workers and Work-related Invalids (ANMIL).
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!
I extend my affectionate greeting to all of you, to the President, whom I thank for the words he has addressed to me, and to all the members of your Association. By gathering and supporting those who have suffered mutilations or disabilities in their work, and striving to promote a culture and practice that is attentive to health and safety, ANMIL has a very important social function, for which, on behalf of God's people, we owe you esteem and gratitude.
Those who are injured at work, with permanent and debilitating consequences, live in a situation of particular suffering, especially when the disability they bear prevents them from continuing to work and providing for themselves and their loved ones, as they once did. To all of them I express my closeness. God comforts those who suffer, having suffered himself, and makes himself close to every situation of poverty and humility. With his strength, everyone is called to an active commitment to solidarity and support for those who are the victims of accidents at work; this support must extend to families, who are equally affected and in need of comfort. By doing this, ANMIL performs a noble and essential task, and calls on the whole of society to have a duty of gratitude and concrete help to those who have been injured in carrying out their work. The scarcity of resources, which the governments are rightly concerned about, certainly can not touch delicate areas like this, because the necessary cuts must concern waste, but solidarity must never be cut!
The indispensable dimension of assistance does not exhaust the tasks of society and of the Association itself, which in your Statutes (see Article 3) provide for professional and social insertion or reintegration, and is attentive to the fact that solidarity is always conjugated with subsidiarity, which represents its completion, so that everyone is allowed to offer his own contribution to the common good. The social teaching of the Church, to which I urge you to turn for inspiration, constantly recalls this balance between solidarity and subsidiarity. It must be sought and built in every circumstance and social context, so that, on the one hand, solidarity is never lacking and, on the other, it is not limited by making those who can still make an important contribution to the world work passive, but by actively involving them, putting its capabilities to good use.
The subsidiary style, which I have now referred to, helps the whole of civil community to overcome the fallacious and harmful equivalence between work and productivity, which leads to measuring the value of people based on the quantity of goods or wealth they produce, reducing them to a system, and debasing their peculiarity and personal wealth. This sick look contains within itself the germ of exploitation and enslavement, rooted in a utilitarian conception of the human person.
Precisely for this reason the tireless activity of the ANMIL in favour of workers' rights, starting from the weak and least protected - such as women, the elderly and immigrants - is precious. Here, our world needs a tremor of humanity, which leads us to open our eyes and see that those in front of us are not a commodity, but a person and a brother in humanity.
In this regard, I can not but rejoice in the commitment you make in collaboration with civil institutions, and in particular with the Ministry of Labor and with that of Education, University and Research. You have given birth to many training projects, aimed at school students, workers and managers of companies, so that they become more aware of the needs of safety and protection for the health of workers. This synergy has also produced - ten years ago now - the most important text concerning security, whose full implementation you are called to monitor. This constant attention to the legislative sphere, as well as to the commitment of solidarity, reveals on your part the awareness that the creation of a new culture of work can not do without a more adequate legislative framework, which meets the real needs of workers, as well as a deeper social conscience regarding the problem of protection of health and safety, without which all laws would remain nothing but lifeless letters.
The finalization of the legislative plan, as well as the formation of a culture more attentive to the safety of work, aims at the detailed and valuable Report on health and safety in the workplace, which you presented a few days ago. It testifies to your dedication and concreteness and reveals, to anyone who takes it in hand, that the battles that have been going on for 75 years with commitment and determination, do not concern only those who have been the victims of work injuries or those who perform dangerous and wearying jobs, but every citizen, because together with the culture of work and security the very substance of democracy is at stake, based on respect for and protection of everyone's life.
Dear friends, I urge you to carry on this noble mission, which contrasts indifference and sadness and increases fraternity and joy. I accompany you with my prayer and my blessing. And you too, please do not forget to pray for me. Thank you.
Greetings of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
addressed to victims of work-related accidents
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!
I extend my affectionate greeting to all of you, to the President, whom I thank for the words he has addressed to me, and to all the members of your Association. By gathering and supporting those who have suffered mutilations or disabilities in their work, and striving to promote a culture and practice that is attentive to health and safety, ANMIL has a very important social function, for which, on behalf of God's people, we owe you esteem and gratitude.
Those who are injured at work, with permanent and debilitating consequences, live in a situation of particular suffering, especially when the disability they bear prevents them from continuing to work and providing for themselves and their loved ones, as they once did. To all of them I express my closeness. God comforts those who suffer, having suffered himself, and makes himself close to every situation of poverty and humility. With his strength, everyone is called to an active commitment to solidarity and support for those who are the victims of accidents at work; this support must extend to families, who are equally affected and in need of comfort. By doing this, ANMIL performs a noble and essential task, and calls on the whole of society to have a duty of gratitude and concrete help to those who have been injured in carrying out their work. The scarcity of resources, which the governments are rightly concerned about, certainly can not touch delicate areas like this, because the necessary cuts must concern waste, but solidarity must never be cut!
The indispensable dimension of assistance does not exhaust the tasks of society and of the Association itself, which in your Statutes (see Article 3) provide for professional and social insertion or reintegration, and is attentive to the fact that solidarity is always conjugated with subsidiarity, which represents its completion, so that everyone is allowed to offer his own contribution to the common good. The social teaching of the Church, to which I urge you to turn for inspiration, constantly recalls this balance between solidarity and subsidiarity. It must be sought and built in every circumstance and social context, so that, on the one hand, solidarity is never lacking and, on the other, it is not limited by making those who can still make an important contribution to the world work passive, but by actively involving them, putting its capabilities to good use.
The subsidiary style, which I have now referred to, helps the whole of civil community to overcome the fallacious and harmful equivalence between work and productivity, which leads to measuring the value of people based on the quantity of goods or wealth they produce, reducing them to a system, and debasing their peculiarity and personal wealth. This sick look contains within itself the germ of exploitation and enslavement, rooted in a utilitarian conception of the human person.
Precisely for this reason the tireless activity of the ANMIL in favour of workers' rights, starting from the weak and least protected - such as women, the elderly and immigrants - is precious. Here, our world needs a tremor of humanity, which leads us to open our eyes and see that those in front of us are not a commodity, but a person and a brother in humanity.
In this regard, I can not but rejoice in the commitment you make in collaboration with civil institutions, and in particular with the Ministry of Labor and with that of Education, University and Research. You have given birth to many training projects, aimed at school students, workers and managers of companies, so that they become more aware of the needs of safety and protection for the health of workers. This synergy has also produced - ten years ago now - the most important text concerning security, whose full implementation you are called to monitor. This constant attention to the legislative sphere, as well as to the commitment of solidarity, reveals on your part the awareness that the creation of a new culture of work can not do without a more adequate legislative framework, which meets the real needs of workers, as well as a deeper social conscience regarding the problem of protection of health and safety, without which all laws would remain nothing but lifeless letters.
The finalization of the legislative plan, as well as the formation of a culture more attentive to the safety of work, aims at the detailed and valuable Report on health and safety in the workplace, which you presented a few days ago. It testifies to your dedication and concreteness and reveals, to anyone who takes it in hand, that the battles that have been going on for 75 years with commitment and determination, do not concern only those who have been the victims of work injuries or those who perform dangerous and wearying jobs, but every citizen, because together with the culture of work and security the very substance of democracy is at stake, based on respect for and protection of everyone's life.
Dear friends, I urge you to carry on this noble mission, which contrasts indifference and sadness and increases fraternity and joy. I accompany you with my prayer and my blessing. And you too, please do not forget to pray for me. Thank you.
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