Pope Francis: Peace needs development and instruction
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Pope Francis welcomes volunteers of the Italian Charity for the Promotion of Literacy in the Globe, and encourages them to go on their commitment to defeating poverty and promoting peace through education.
By Lisa Zengarini
Conference volunteers of the Italian Charity for the Promotion of Literacy in the Planet (Opera di Promozione dell’Alfabetizzazione nel Mondo – OPAM) on Monday, Pope Francis praised the Catholic nonprofit organization’s commitment to foster the appropriate to education as a usually means to defeat poverty.
The group is engaged in making and supporting colleges, organizing teacher schooling, literacy and vocational training for grownups, specially women of all ages, in above 80 countries to boost sustainable growth and human dignity for each and every single man or woman.
It is also committed to selling a culture of peace as a result of twinning colleges in the World wide North and Worldwide South and intercultural tasks.
OPAM was founded in 1972 by Italian priest Don Carlo Muratore, who just after performing quite a few decades as a missionary in Venezuela, arrived to know that illiteracy lies amongst the key results in of poverty.
Schooling is a path to peace
That conviction, Pope Francis observed, is at the coronary heart of St. Paul VI’s Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio and of other landmark pontifical documents of the 1960s, “clearly indicating enhancement as the path to peace” and “that there can be no integral human improvement with no schooling.”
The Pope remarked that these paperwork – like Pope St. John XXIII’s Encyclical “Pacem in Terris“ (1963) – are even now relevant in today’s world wherever the root triggers of underdevelopment have not been removed since the “development product has not changed”.
This is exactly where OPAM’s important do the job arrives in: “Your work aims precisely at taking away one particular of the will cause of underdevelopment, which is illiteracy,” he mentioned.
God’s ‘dream’ for a fraternal entire world
Pope Francis went on to take note the “dream” of Populorum Progressio is the very same as that of Encyclical Fratelli tutti: that is the aspiration of God, “who desires a globe in which we can all reside as brothers and sisters in total dignity.”
Feed your function with the lymph of the Gospel
Pope Francis concluded his address by encouraging the volunteers of OPAM to strive in advance in their perform to advertise literacy, feeding it continuously “with the lymph of the Gospel,” so that the Holy Spirit may well hold the inspiration and motivations of their dedication alive.
