Ramadan Message (Part 2)

PONTIFICAL COUNCIL

FOR INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

Christians and Muslims:

Together in overcoming poverty

MESSAGE FOR THE END OF RAMADAN
‘Id al-Fitr 1430 H. / 2009 A.D.

Vatican City

In his recent Encyclical Letter Caritas in veritate on integral human development in charity and truth, Pope Benedict XVI, taking into consideration the current context of efforts to promote development, underlines the need for a “new humanistic synthesis” (n. 21), which, safeguarding the openness of man to God, gives him his place as the earth’s “centre and summit” (n. 57). A true development, then, must be ordered “to the whole man and to every man” (Populorum progressio, n. 42).

4. In his talk on the occasion of the World Day for Peace, 1St January 2009, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI distinguished two types of poverty: a poverty to be combated and a poverty to be embraced.

The poverty to be combated is before the eyes of everyone: hunger, lack of clean water, limited medical care and inadequate shelter, insufficient educational and cultural systems, illiteracy, not to mention also the existence of new forms of poverty “... in advanced wealthy societies, there is evidence of marginalization, as well as affective, moral and spiritual poverty...” (Message for the World Day of Peace, 2009, n. 2).

The poverty to be embraced is that of a style of life which is simple and essential, avoiding waste and respecting the environment and the goodness of creation. This poverty can also be, at least at certain times during the year, that of frugality and fasting. It is the poverty which we choose which predisposes us to go beyond ourselves, expanding the heart.


(...to be continued)