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August 26, 2020 "The pandemic has highlighted and aggravated social problems, especially inequality. Some can work from home, while for many others this is impossible. Some children, despite the difficulties, can continue to receive school education, while for many others this has abruptly stopped. Some powerful nations can issue money to deal with the emergency, while for others this would mean mortgaging the future ". Thus the Pope at the general audience.

"These symptoms of inequality reveal a social disease; it is a virus that comes from a sick economy: and we have to say it simply, the economy is sick. It is the result of inequitable economic growth, this is the disease, which is independent of values fundamental humans. In today's world, few of the very rich possess more than all the rest of humanity. It is an injustice that cries out to heaven! ". 

"Property and money are tools that can serve mission, development. However, we easily transform them into goals, individual or collective. And when this happens, essential human values ​​are affected", the Pontiff underlined. "Homo sapiens is deformed and becomes a kind of homo economicus - in the worst sense - individualistic, calculating and dominating", continued the Pope.

According to Francis, "we forget that, being created in the image and likeness of God, we are beings social, creative and supportive, with an immense capacity to love: we often forget about this ".

In fact, "we are the most cooperative beings of all species, and we flourish in community, as can be seen clearly in the experience of the saints", the Pope said.   

"When the obsession with possessing and dominating excludes millions of people from primary goods - the Pope continued - when economic and technological inequality is such as to tear the social fabric; and when dependence on unlimited material progress threatens the common home , then we cannot stand and watch. No, this is distressing, we cannot stand and watch ".   

"With our gaze fixed on Jesus and with the certainty that his love works through the community of his disciples, we must all act together, in the hope of generating something different and better", the Pope added.

"We are living a crisis - continued Francesco 'off the cuff' -, the pandemic has put us all in crisis. But remember: from a crisis we do not come out the same or we come out better or we come out worse. After the crisis we will continue with this system of social injustice and contempt for the care of our common home? Let's think about it. Care for creation and social justice go together ". 

 "And finally - concluded Bergoglio -, let's think about children: read the statistics, how many children are dying of hunger today due to a poor distribution of wealth, for an economic system as I said before. And how many children today do not have the right to school , for the same reason. Whether this image of children in need, through hunger or lack of education, understand that we must get out of this crisis better ".

The economic system is indifferent to the damage inflicted on the environment
"This economic model is indifferent to the damage inflicted on the common home," Pope Francis denounced in the general audience. "We are close to overcoming many of the limits of our wonderful planet, with serious and irreversible consequences - he underlined - from the loss of biodiversity and climate change to the rise in sea level and the destruction of tropical forests". According to the Pope, "social inequality and environmental degradation go hand in hand and have the same root: that of the sin of wanting to possess and dominate brothers and sisters, nature and God himself. But this is not the design of creation".   

"God asked us to dominate the earth in his name - the Pope explained - by cultivating it and taking care of it as a garden, everyone's garden". "But be careful not to interpret this as a carte blanche to make the earth what you want - he warned, referring to his encyclical Laudato si '-. No. There is a' relationship of responsible reciprocity 'between us and nature. We receive from creation. and we give in turn. 'Each community can take from the goodness of the earth what it needs for its own survival, but it also has the duty to protect it' ".   

According to the Pope, the earth "was given by God 'to the whole human race'. And therefore it is our duty to ensure that its fruits reach everyone, not just some. This is a key element of our relationship with earthly goods ".

And "to ensure that what we possess brings value to the community, 'political authority has the right and the duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right of property in terms of the common good'". The "subordination of private property to the universal destination of goods", he concluded, is "a 'golden rule' of social behavior, and the first principle of the whole ethical-social order".