Pope Benedict XVI recently addressed
Manuel Barrera Roberto López, the new
ambassador of El Salvador to the Holy See. Pope Benedict said that the Church's mission is to foster the "public good in all dimensions."
“Evangelizing and bearing witness to love for God and for all persons without exception becomes an effective element in eradicating poverty and is a vigorous incentive to fight against violence, impunity, and drug trafficking, which are wreaking such havoc, especially among youth," he said...
In Nicaragua,
Archbishop Silvio Baez also called on Nicaraguan politicians to tackle poverty and the lack of jobs in the country not for political point scoring but because it is the right thing to do.
"Populism and paternalism are a continuous temptation", Bishop Baez said in a television interview, "and can dangerously become a means of ideological propaganda of a party's interests. The poor should not be used, but we need to serve them, give them dignity and help them through decent work."
One of the more interesting tidbits from the article was Bishop Baez' response to criticism that Ortega recently leveled against Catholic priests speaking out from the pulpit.
Asked about statements some time ago of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, who had criticized priests for speaking out from their pulpits and calling on the people to assert their rights, the Auxiliary Bishop of Managua said he did not feel harmed by those statements because this action does not safeguard the interests of any political party.
A statement by the bishop noted, "'I do not repent of what I said,'” and "In the Cathedral I said that the people have the right to hold politicians accountable, as it is the people that elected them...and they are to serve society and not to use it."
All I can think of is Pope John Paul's criticism of Catholic priests who held positions in Ortega's Sandinista government. Here he is chastising Father Ernesto Cardenal upon his arrival in Managua in 1983. How times have changed.
No comments:
Post a Comment