Francis’ call before the Jubilee entrusted to the participants in a meeting sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. “No government can morally demand that its people suffer deprivations incompatible with human dignity.” In the general audience, he reflected on the freedom that is born from the “wind of the Holy Spirit.”
Vatican City () – The world needs “a new, courageous and creative international financial architecture”, which urgently confronts the debt problem of poor countries. Returning to one of the themes indicated in the Bull of Indiction of the now imminent Jubilee of 2025Pope Francis once again urged this commitment this morning when meeting – before the usual appointment for the general audience – with the participants in the meeting on the topic “Confronting the debt crisis in the Global South”, promoted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
“After poorly managed globalization, pandemics and wars,” said Francis, “we find ourselves facing a debt crisis that affects countries in the Global South above all, causing misery and anguish and depriving millions of people of the possibility of a future.” worthy. Consequently, no government can morally demand that its people suffer deprivations incompatible with human dignity. To try to break the cycle of debt financing, a multinational mechanism must be created, based on the solidarity and harmony of peoples, which takes into account the global nature of the problem and its economic, financial and social implications. The absence of such a mechanism,” he warned, “favors the every man for himself mentality, in which the weakest always lose.”
Precisely the Holy Year 2025 – said the Pontiff – calls us to open our minds and hearts to be able to untie the knots of ties that strangle the present, without forgetting that we are only custodians and administrators, not masters. I invite you to dream and act together – he concluded – in the responsible construction of our common home; We cannot inhabit it with a clear conscience when we know that around us there are multitudes of hungry brothers and sisters mired in social exclusion and vulnerability. Letting this go is a sin, a human sin. Even if you don’t have faith, it is a social sin.
Pope Francis then moved to St. Peter’s Square for the general audience with the pilgrims, during which he continued the new cycle of catechesis begun last week on the topic of the Holy Spirit, stopping at the name by which he is called in the Bible to the third person of the Trinity. “Spirit,” he recalled, “is the Latinized version. The name by which the prophets, the psalmists, Mary, Jesus and the Apostles knew him is Ruach, which means breath, wind, breath. It is a name that contains “the first fundamental revelation about the person and function of the Holy Spirit.” Indeed, the image of the wind serves above all to “express the power of the divine Spirit: an overwhelming and indomitable force, capable even of moving oceans.” But «Jesus highlights another characteristic: his freedom. To Nicodemus, who visits him at night, he says solemnly: ‘The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going: so is everyone who is born of the Spirit’ (Jn 3, 8).
“To try to enclose the Holy Spirit in concepts, definitions, theses or treatises, as modern rationalism has sometimes tried to do,” Francisco commented, “is to lose it, annul it or reduce it to the pure and simple human spirit.” A temptation that also applies to the Church when she tries to “enclose the Holy Spirit in canons, institutions, definitions.” But just as the wind blows “where it pleases,” the Spirit distributes his gifts “as he pleases.” «Saint Paul – he added – will make this the fundamental law of Christian action: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3,17)». A freedom that “is not freedom to do what one wants, but freedom to freely do what God wants. Not freedom to do good or evil, but freedom to do good and do it freely, that is, by attraction, not by coercion. In other words, “freedom of children, not of slaves.” And it is a freedom that – Paul continued explaining – is not “a pretext for the flesh”, but “the service of one another.” «We ask Jesus – he concluded – to make us, through his Holy Spirit, truly free men and women. Free to serve, in love and joy.
In his greeting to the groups of pilgrims, finally, Pope Francis – in the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus – announced that he is writing a new document dedicated to this form of devotion inaugurated 350 years ago by the first manifestation to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and will be published in September. «It will do us a lot of good – he commented – to meditate on various aspects of the Lord’s love that can illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal; but also that they can say something meaningful to a world that seems to have lost its heart.
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