En route on March 23 to Latin America, Pope Benedict XVI called for patience with the Catholic Church’s effort to promote freedom in Communist Cuba and criticized Catholics who participate in the illegal drug trade or who ignore their moral responsibilities to seek social justice. Responding to a question about human rights in Cuba, Pope Benedict said that the “church is always on the side of freedom—freedom of conscience, freedom of religion.” He added, “We want to help in the spirit of dialogue to avoid the trauma and to help move toward a fraternal and just society” in Cuba. Asked about Latin America’s dramatic inequalities of wealth, Pope Benedict lamented what he called a widespread moral “schizophrenia” that stresses personal morality while ignoring social conscience. Commenting on the Mexican drug war that has claimed an estimated 50,000 people over the past five years, Pope Benedict said that the church has a responsibility to “unmask evil, unmask the idolatry of money that enslaves man” as well as the “false promises, the lie, the swindle that lie behind drugs.”
Pope in Mexico, Cuba
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
The Jerusalem patriarchate expressed its "deepest condemnation" of the attack, saying it was a "flagrant violation of human dignity and a blatant violation of the sanctity of life and the sanctity of religious sites, which are supposed to provide a safe haven in times of war."
Despair is easy for anyone who takes seriously the call to love your neighbor as yourself. But hope can come in two ways.
A Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, by Father Terrance Klein
The majority of survey respondents cited their Marian devotions as having played an important role in the discernment and living of their call to religious life.