By Junno Arocho Esteves
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Employers who make business deals that
threaten people’s livelihood commit a sin that robs men, women and their
families of their dignity, Pope Francis said.
“Whoever — because of economic maneuvering and business
dealings that are not all clear — closes factories and businesses and takes work away from men and
women commits a grave sin,” the pope said March 15 before concluding his
weekly general audience.
The pope was speaking
to a group of employees from Italy’s Sky television; several hundred
employees risk losing their jobs after the company announced plans to move
their Rome headquarters to Milan.
According to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Sky Italia claimed
the move was due to rising costs and an outdated digital infrastructure in
Rome. Local workers’ unions have criticized the company’s decision that will
force 300 workers to transfer from the capital while an estimated 200 employees
will be left without a job.
Before the audience began, the pope circled St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile, stopping
along the way to kiss babies and wave to the thousands of pilgrims present.
Stepping out of his popemobile, the pope also greeted several Chinese pilgrims from the
Tanjin Meng Fu Lu Chang
group.
One pilgrim holding a child couldn’t contain his emotions,
kneeling and prostrating while the pope stooped down to help him up. The child he carried also
bowed respectfully.
Another Chinese pilgrim approached the pope on her knees while the
pope, visibly moved, tried to raise her up. He also greeted the other pilgrims, who were waving
Chinese flags and holding a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which he blessed.
In his main audience talk,
part of a series on Christian hope, Pope Francis reflected on St. Paul’s call in his Letter to the Romans for
Christians to be “joyful in hope” and sincere in their love.
A Christian’s “highest vocation” is the call to love and charity. However, the
pope said, St. Paul also warns of “the risk that our charity can become
hypocritical.”
“Hypocrisy can infiltrate anywhere, even in our way of
loving,” he said, especially when acts of love or charity are done
“to put ourselves on display or so that we feel fulfilled.”
Christians, he added, must ask themselves if their love is sincere
and “not that of
a soap opera.”
“There is a false, misleading idea behind all this: namely
that if we love, it is because we are good, as if charity was a creation of
man, a product of our heart,” the pope said.
Charity and love, he continued, are a grace that is meant to shine forth what
“the Lord gives us and what we freely receive.”
St. Paul’s warning, the pope explained, is “not so much a
reproach but rather an encouragement to revive hope in us.”
“We need the Lord to continually renew this gift in our hearts through
the experience of his mercy,” Pope Francis said. “In this way, we will be able to appreciate
the little, simple and ordinary things again, and we will be able to
love others as God loves them.”
–
– –
Follow
Arocho on Twitter: @arochoju.
– – –
Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.
