Pope's
July missionary prayer intention for the poor of Latin America
The
missionary prayer intention of the Pope Francis for the month of July is for
the poor in Latin America – that amid social inequalities, Latin
American Christians may bear witness to love for the poor and
contribute to a more fraternal society. The prayer intention is
very obvious given the fact that the Pope will be on a pastoral visit to his
native continent starting Sunday. He is visiting Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay,
July 5-13.
According
to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), one of
the few areas where inequality has not been growing in the last 30 years has
been Latin America, although levels of inequality were much higher there to
start with. And among the Latin American nations, Chile showed the widest
gap in income distribution between the rich and the poor. This inequality becomes
even more enigmatic when we come to know that Latin America is the most
Catholic continent in the world. Apparently, believers don’t take the
Gospel and the Church’s teaching seriously enough to affect their
actions outside the church. This why Pope Francis in his apostolic
exhortation ‘Evangelii Gaudium” or “The Joy of the Gospel”, says, “I prefer a
Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the
streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from
clinging to its own security.” “I do not want a Church concerned
with being at the center and then ends up by being caught up in a web of
obsessions and procedures.” In the 85-page document the Holy Father
envisages a more missionary Church that “gets its hands dirty” for the sake of
the poor and oppressed in a world that prizes profit over people.
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