Pope Francis recalled that for the Christian tradition the right to private property is not absolute
"When resolving within the law, we give the poor essential things, we do not give them our things, or third parties, but we give them back what is theirs. We have lost many times this idea of giving back what belongs to them," he said in a video message released by the Vatican. "Let us build the new social justice assuming that the Christian tradition never recognized as absolute and untouchable the right to private property and always emphasized the social function of any of its forms," he added.
"The property right is a secondary natural right derived from the right that everyone has, born of the universal destiny of created goods. There is no social justice that can be based on inequity, which supposes the concentration of wealth," he stressed, when inaugurating a virtual conference on "The construction of the new social justice; towards the full validity of the fundamental rights of people in vulnerable conditions."
The Pope, who in his last encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, on fraternity and social friendship, also evoked this concept of the social function of private property, in the video message he reflected on the five bases on which justice should be built for him Social.
The five bases of social justice, according to the Pope
The first, he stressed, has to do with reality: "The ideas that you will surely work on should not lose sight of the anguishing picture in which a small part of humanity lives in opulence, while an amount each More and more, their dignity is unknown and their most elementary rights are ignored or violated. We cannot think disconnected from reality. And this is a reality that they must bear in mind," he said.
The second refers to the ways in which justice is gestated: "I think of a collective work, a collective work, where all well-intentioned people challenge utopia and assume that, as well as good and love, It is just a task that must be conquered every day, because imbalance is a temptation every minute. That is why every day is a conquest," he explained.
He linked the third base to the attitude of commitment, following the path of the Good Samaritan: that is, to the idea that one must take "charge of the other's pain and not slip into a culture of indifference." The fourth, to the idea of "history as the driving axis". And the fifth, to the people: "It is very difficult to build social justice without basing ourselves on the people. In other words, history takes us to the people, the peoples. It will be a much easier task if we incorporate free, pure and simple desire. of wanting to be a people, without pretending to be an enlightened elite, but a people, being constant and tireless in the work of including, integrating and lifting up the fallen. The people are the fifth base to build social justice. And, from the Gospel, what God asks of us, believers, is to be God's people, not God's elite. Because those who go the way of the 'God's elite' end up in the so-called elitist clericalisms that, out there, work for the people, but nothing with the people, without feeling like a people," he warned.
Roof, land and work
He then recalled the importance of being supportive and fair. "Solidarity in fighting against the structural causes of poverty, inequality, lack of work, land and housing. Roof, land and work, the three 'T' [for Techo, Tierra and Trabajo, in Spanish] that anoint us worthy," he stressed. "Fighting, in short, against those who deny social and labor rights. Fighting against that culture that leads to using others, enslaving others, and ends up taking away the dignity of others. Do not forget that solidarity, understood in its deepest sense, it is a way of making history," he exhorted. It was in this context that, soon after, he recalled that the Christian tradition never recognized as absolute or untouchable the right to private property.
Argentine judge Roberto Andrés Gallardo, president of the Pan-American Committee of Judges for Social Rights and Franciscan Doctrine and judge of first instance in administrative and tax litigation of the city of Buenos Aires, was one of the organizers of the virtual conference , which lasts two days and will end tomorrow.
After Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Vatican Academy of Sciences, who also participates, Gallardo was one of the speakers at the meeting, in which the former Supreme Court judge, Raúl Zaffaroni, member of the Inter-American Court, also spoke. Human Rights, who recently criticized the Buenos Aires government for the eviction of the property taken in Guernica.
Representatives from Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Morocco, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela also participate.
As on another occasion, in the Casina Pius IV, in the Vatican, the Pope called all the judges who attend the meeting "poets", such as the Social Movements. "I wish to return to that idea. The poet needs to contemplate, think, understand the music of reality and translate it into words. In every decision, in every sentence, you are faced with the happy possibility of making poetry: a poetry that heals the wounds of the poor, who integrate the planet, who protect Mother Earth and all her descendants. A poetry that repairs, redeems, nurtures," he told them. Finally, he reminded them that "no sentence can be fair, nor any legitimate law if what they produce is more inequality, if what they produce is more loss of rights, indignity or violence."
Source: La Nación
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