Solidarity Pope Quotes

Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don't have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice. I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better - and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. When it is the right kind of joy, when it is not egotistic, when it comes from the perception of the good, then it wants to communicate itself, and it gets passed on. In this connection, it always strikes me that in the poor neighborhoods of, say, South America, one sees many more laughing happy people than among us. Obviously, despite all their misery, they still have the perception of the good to which they cling and in which they can find encouragement and strength. In this sense we have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately only faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and to be a human being. This results, then, in the courage to rejoice, which in turn becomes commitment to making sure that other people, too, can rejoice and receive good news.

Have the courage to go against the tide of this culture of efficiency, this culture of waste. Encountering and welcoming everyone, [building] solidarity—a word that is being hidden by this culture, as if it were a bad word—solidarity and fraternity: these are what make our society truly human.

This state of affairs, which bodes ill for the future, causes Us great distress and anguish. But We cherish this hope: that distrust and selfishness among nations will eventually be overcome by a stronger desire for mutual collaboration and a heightened sense of solidarity. We hope that the developing nations will take advantage of their geographical proximity to one another to organize on a broader territorial base and to pool their efforts for the development of a given region. We hope that they will draw up joint programs, coordinate investment funds wisely, divide production quotas fairly, and exercise management over the marketing of these products. We also hope that multilateral and broad international associations will undertake the necessary work of organization to find ways of helping needy nations, so that these nations may escape from the fetters now binding them; so that they themselves may discover the road to cultural and social progress, while remaining faithful to the native genius of their land.

Gossip and judgment destroy solidarity and break down the culture of cooperation.

To serve means to work alongside the neediest, first of all to establish a close human relationship with them, based on solidarity. Solidarity—this word elicits fear in the developed world. They try not to say it. It is almost a dirty word for them. But it’s our word!

turned out, the resolve of these two hard-line politicians was soon to be tested. The seeds of the crisis they would face were sown in the unlikely location of a Polish shipyard in Gdansk, by a union official named Lech Walesa. The Solidarity trade union had been formed on September 17, 1980, after an earlier wave of strikes. It was

There is no room for gossip in the life of a Christian, and it arises from judging others. Gossip and judgment destroy solidarity and break down the culture of cooperation. Instead of gossiping, Pope Francis urges the people, “Go and pray for him! Go and do penance for her! And then, if it is necessary, speak to that person who may be able to seek remedy for the problem. But don’t tell everyone!

Freedom experienced in solidarity is expressed in action for justice in the political and social fields, and directs the gaze towards the freedom of others. There is no freedom without solidarity.

When I speak of solidarity I mean much more than the promotion of philanthropic works or financial assistance to help those who lose out. Because solidarity is not sharing of crumbs from the table, but to make space at the table for everyone. The dignity of the people calls for communion: for the sharing and multiplying of goods, and for the participation of all for the sake of all.

But the opposite of libertarian hyperindividualism is not necessarily the Red Army kicking in the door of your father’s drugstore. It could also be a sense of social solidarity, an ethic of “We’re all in this together.” As Pope Francis said, after a closed-door meeting with oil company executives about climate change in 2018, “Decisive progress on this path cannot be made without an increased awareness that all of us are part of one human family, united by bands of fraternity and solidarity.

To recover the dignity of the people we need to go to the margins of our societies to meet all those who live there. Hidden there are ways of looking at the world that can give us all a fresh start. We cannot dream of the future while continuing to ignore the lives of practically a third of the world’s population rather than seeing them as a resource. I mean those who lack regular work living on the margins of the market economy….Yet if we manage to come close and put aside our stereo-types we discover that many of them are far from being merely passive victims. Organized in a global archipelago of associations and movements, they represent the hope of solidarity in an age of exclusion and indifference. On the margins I have discovered so many social movements with roots in parishes or schools that bring people together to make them protagonists of their own histories, to set in motion dynamics that smacked of dignity. Taking life as it comes, they do not sit around resigned or complaining but come together to convert injustice into new possibilities. I call them ‘social poets.’ In mobilizing for change, in their search for dignity, I see a source of moral energy, a reserve of civic passion, capable of revitalizing our democracy and reorienting the economy.