The humanity of the last

At time when "large supermarkets and or computer screens are the places devoted to day-dreaming", when "we all feel disoriented and lonelier" it is necessary to "start anew from love". "This is the message that Christians from the East and from the West are called to offer men and women today in order to build a more just and more human society". With these words Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the family addressed participants in the international conference titled "The Church and the poor. Orthodox and Catholics to the service of charity", organized December 5 in Moscow by the Synod department for charity and social service of the Patriarchate of Moscow and together with the St. Egidio Community. The Conference falls within the itinerary of the thirty-year long ecumenical friendship and cooperation between the Community of St. Egidio and the Russian Orthodox Church. A few days ago, November 29, the Italian minister for cooperation, Andrea Riccardi, founder of St. Egidio, met in Moscow with the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill. "We share the belief – write the members of the St. Egidio Community – that before a contemporary culture that favours the marginalization of all those who are weak, it is ever more necessary to recover the central role of Christians in the encounter with the poor and their questions, in the framework of uncertainty produced by the complexity of the globalized world".Solitude and lack of love. "Contemporary men and women – said Msgr. Paglia – seek to fill their freezers and their closets as easily as they empty them. Money has taken on a new value and significance". It "leads people to believe that everything has a price, mixing price with value". "We are all disoriented and lonelier" as "it has become more difficult to find someone and something that will warm up our lives and give life a meaning. Men and women, without love, protection and defense, have become orphans". For lack of love "people die and reach the extent of planning their own death. When man is alone, he’s on the verge of death". This "is the greatest challenge for the Church" and the message that Christians in Europe can and must give together. "Here lies the originality of evangelical love, as well as its irresistible force. Love is an indispensable resource for our world".The value of solidarity. The Metropolitan bishop of Volokolamsk, Ilarion, president of the Department for external relations, denounced the condition of the underprivileged populations in Europe. "If we examine present social situation in Europe, resulting from the longlasting economic crisis – he said – we will see that the weakest population brackets are forced to endure its harshest consequences, while they should enjoy the support of the affluent, according to the principle of solidarity". What is most disturbing is that "a pre-eminent value such as solidarity" is proclaimed by everyone, "but in reality contemporary European society is guided by the most contemptible values according to corporate or individual interests". Hence the bishop’s appeal: "In order to enable European societies to recover from the ongoing crisis it is necessary that moral and religious values are restored the role they deserve in the hierarchy of social values. Only by abiding with this scale of values, marked not by subjectivity or individualism, but by an objective feature: the ‘revelation of God’, society and man therein developed can aspire to a full, harmonious growth".In defense of the poor. Among the values highlighted at the conference, the president of the Community of St. Egidio, Marco Impagliazzo, proposed gratuitousness, described as the "content of true humanism", the sole "answer" to the dictatorship of materialism. The present situation is contradictory. "Values are invoked, but nobody believes that this model can be changed". It is therefore necessary to "react". "Thus putting into practice free bestowal is a token of brotherly love in a world overcome by a vortex, to reaffirm the centrality of peace between populations and nations". Yet another form of presence guarantees justice and social justice: the presence of the poor. "And this is not a paradox as it may seem". At a time when "everything is bought and sold and where economic principles prevail", the encounter with the poor "releases positive energies and frees us from the obsession of always needing to have something in return. Eliminating poor people from society is equal to a loss of hope. The social elimination of the poor causes barbarization and the end of free bestowal. A society without free bestowal is a society without brotherly love". Those who preserve a bond with the poor, also in difficult times will never loose the path of humaneness. The poor are reliable compasses of the culture of brotherly love".