Words for tomorrow” “” “

As Christmas approaches, and the frenetic period of so-called Christmas shopping dawns in our consumer society, the Italian publishing house Città Nuova is publishing an Italian version of Father Joseph Wresinski’s book, Words for Tomorrow, 15 years after its first edition in French. Father Joseph (1917-1988) is one of those churchmen who, like the Abbé Pierre, have made the Gospel indignation against injustice the foundation of their action in society. Born into a very poor family, he gained direct experience of the violence of poverty in his youth. In 1956 he discovered the bidonville of Noisy-le-Sec, on the outskirts of Paris, an abandoned area just a few kilometres from the glittering lights and opulence of the city centre. Here lived hundreds of families in a kind of shantytown of makeshift shacks, surrounded by mud and infested by rats, without heating, without water, without electricity. He decided to share their life. He called them the Fourth World to emphasize their condition of abandonment. To bring together those able to “unite justice and love” in the struggle against poverty, he founded the ATD Fourth World movement in 1957 (ADT: Aide à Toute Détresse, Aid to every form of distress). It marked the start of a mission that rapidly assumed an international dimension. This small book is a wonderful collection of stories that lets the poorest of the poor, many of them children, speak for themselves: “Thirty years of life with the families of the Fourth World cannot remain a hidden treasure”, writes Father Joseph. “Nor can I keep to myself all the yearning for justice and thirst for equality that they have distilled in my heart. I have seen those families, I have listened to them: they have enabled me to share so many things that I cannot keep to myself”. He adds: “Being the voice of the children of poverty, being their pen, is a long apprenticeship, just as it is to open our eyes and ears to see and hear what seems incredible and insupportable”. These stories are parables. They are moving and almost poetic. But above all they are appeals to us not to forget that the time of poverty is not over, even in the developed countries, and that the history of poverty is always with us, here and now. It did not stop with economic development and the creation of the Welfare State. It has not vanished into regions of the world visible only through television. It is present in our daily life. It disturbs our peace of mind. It threatens our social harmony. It accompanies us with its grim train of sadness, violence and despair. God, to become man, chose the humblest condition, that of a child born into a condition of the most abject poverty. These words of children arrive just at the right time for us to remember that Christmas ought not to be the festivity of consumerism, but that of self-giving, during which homage should be paid to the poor. “We know that only love will create new times for the unhappy”, says Father Joseph. These “Words for the future” ought to occupy a central place in our Christmas shopping.