Arrived in the Greek capital, the pope inserted the theme of refugees into a more comprehensive reflection on politics: “Because politics is a good thing, it must be in practice”.
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Pope Francis left Cyprus to reach Athens on Saturday 4 December on the third day of his visit to the two Greek-speaking countries. In Greece, as in Nicosia, the destiny of migrants will be at the center of his remarks. On Sunday’s day, in particular, with the second visit of the head of the Catholic Church in Lesbos, Aegean Island close to the Turkish coasts on which refugees come from Asia Minor to Europe for years. He had already reversed in 2016 and had brought three Syrian families to Rome, where they had been taken care of by the community of Sant’Egidio.
But Pope Francis took advantage of his arrival in Athens, where the democratic idea was born, to insert the theme of refugees into a more comprehensive reflection on politics, considered by him as a “good thing”. “Here is born democracy, he said in a speech made at the end of the morning at the presidential palace, before the political authorities of the country. The cradle, millennia later, has become a house, a big house democratic peoples: I am thinking here to the European Union and the dream of peace and fraternity that it represents for so many peoples. “
But this invention, said Francis, is today weakened by what he called “the decline of democracy”. “And not only on the European continent,” said the first American pope, without giving an example. “In many societies, concerned about security and anesthetized by consumerism, fatigue and discontent lead to a kind of” democratic skepticism “,” he analyzed. This doubt for democracy is, according to him, to his very nature – “It is complex, while authoritarianism is expeditious and that the easy insurance offered by the populisms seem tempting”. It is accentuated by “the remoteness of the institutions, the fear of loss of identity and bureaucracy”.
Poverty, climate and pandemic
How do you remedy this skepticism? By doing the “good policy”, which grants the “weakest of society” a “special attention”. The answer therefore belongs, according to the Pope, to the rulers, who must give up “an obsessive research of popularity” and the “untenable promises”. “Because politics is a good thing, it must be in practice, as the supreme responsibility of the citizen, as an art of the common good,” said François.
The Roman pontiff gave some examples of the areas in which it deems urgent this “good policy”: the climate, the pandemic and “especially to generalized poverty”. On these issues, he calls the international community “to a multilateralism that is not stifled by excessive nationalist pretensions”. “Politics needs this to increase common requirements before private interests, he added. This may look like a utopia (…). And yet, the crossing of a rough sea, as we have teaches the great Homeric story, is often the only way. “
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