By Christopher Wells
Pope Francis sent a message on Monday to participants in the Pontifical Academy for Life’s 2025 General Assembly. The message was dated Feb 26 from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
The Pope highlighted the concurrent crises, or polycrisis, facing the world, including war, climate change, energy problems, epidemics, migration, and technological innovation.
These issues prompt questions about the fate of the world and how we understand it, he said in his message to the Assembly, which is sponsoring an international workshop on “The End of the World? Crises, Responsibilities, Hopes.”
Overcoming resistance to change
In response to these questions, the Pope said, we must first examine our understanding of the world and the cosmos, in order to overcome our “deep-seated resistance, as individuals and as a society, to change.” He lamented missed opportunities to learn from previous crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, “to transform consciences and social practices.”
The Holy Father also insisted on the need to “avoid standing still” and to “listen to the contribution of scientific knowledge.” The work of the Pontifical Academy, he said, echoes that of the Synod, which had “listening” as one of its keywords.
Pope Francis went on to denounce the “pandering to utilitarian and planetary deregulation,” which he said leads to the imposition of “the law of the strongest”—a law that “dehumanizes.”
Striving for true life
On the contrary, new ways of seeing the world and evolution “can provide us with signs of hope,” a hope which sustains our journey and inspires us to reach out “with impetus towards true life.”
This striving, however, necessarily takes place in a communitarian context, the Pope said, pointing to the need to find solutions to “a complex and planetary crisis.”
In this regard, Pope Francis expressed concern about the “progressive irrelevance of international bodies, which are being undermined by short-sighted attitudes concerned with protecting particular and national interests.”
Strengthening global institutions
Instead, he argued, the human community must strive “for more effective world organizations, invested with authority to ensure the common good of the world, the eradication of hunger and misery, and the sure defense of fundamental human rights.”
This, in turn, can promote a multilateralism that does not depend upon the vicissitudes of politics or the interests of the few, and can encourage a “stable effectiveness.”
This, Pope Francis said, is the broad context of the Academy’s work, for which he thanked the members before entrusting them to the intercession of Mary, Seat of Wisdom and Mother of Hope. – Vatican News
