‘You yourselves will learn ever better how to be faithful to the word of God which challenges us in history, and to show solidarity with the world, which you are not called to judge but rather to offer new paths, accompany journeys, bind hurts and shore up weakness’
July 27, 2018 13:18
Here is a Vatican translation of the message Pope Francis sent for the opening of the III International Conference of Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church held in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 26-29, 2018 on theme “A Critical Time for Bridge-Building: Catholic Theological Ethics Today”:
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Dear Brothers and Sisters!
I greet all you taking part in this, your third worldwide conference on theological ethics. It takes place in Sarajevo, a city of great symbolic value for the journey of reconciliation and peacemaking after the horrors of a recent war that brought so much suffering to the people of that region.
Sarajevo is a city of bridges. Your meeting is inspired by this dominant motif, which warns of the need to build, in an environment of tension and division, new paths of closeness between peoples, cultures, religions, visions of life and political orientations. I have appreciated this effort of yours from the beginning, when the members of your planning committee visited me in the Vatican last March.
The theme of your meeting is one to which I myself have often called attention: the need to build bridges, not walls. I keep repeating this in the lively hope that people everywhere will pay attention to this need that is increasingly acknowledged, albeit at times resisted by fear and forms of regression. Without renouncing prudence, we are called to recognize every sign and mobilize all our energy in order to remove the walls of division and to build bridges of fraternity everywhere in the world.
The three focal points of your meeting intersect along this journey of bridge building in a critical time like our own. You have given a central place to the ecological challenge, since certain of its aspects can create grave imbalances not only in terms of the relationship between man and nature, but also between generations and peoples. This challenge – as it emerges from the Encyclical Laudato Si’ – is not simply one of many, but the broader backdrop for an understanding of both ecological ethics and social ethics. For this reason, your concern for the issue of migrants and refugees is very serious and provokes a metanoia that can foster ethical and theological reflection, even before inspiring suitable pastoral attitudes and responsible and carefully planned political policies.
