THE SOLEMN CONCLUSION IN SAINT PETER'S OF THE SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR AMERICA OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS

In the North, we see with apprehension and consternation how year after year the divide grows between those who live in abundance and those who live with the bare necessities. In the areas where the material benefits are particularly diffused, many of us find ourselves facing the temptation of the young rich man in the Gospel, who shows himself as being indifferent in front of the necessity of those who knock on our door (cfr. Luke 16, 19-31). We must remember what is said in the First letter of Saint John: «But if any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth» (1 John 3 17-18).

In the South, there are regions which suffer conditions of absolute human misery, inconceivable with the dignity which God conferred on all of his children in equal measure. In every part of America there exists the necessity of protecting the innocent unborn from the scourge of abortion. Even there, where misery has not reached very consistent dimensions, there exists the suffering of children who go to sleep at night hungry, fathers and mothers of families without work or without the means of subsistence, of indigenous people whose lands and whose existence are threatened, of thousands of homeless or unemployed because of the changes and unstable conditions of the market. To these ills, added are those provoked by the abuses of globalization of culture and of the world economy, those caused by the trafficking of narcotics, to the transfer of resources towards the arms trade, as well as the political and economic corruption, which deprives the people of participating in material goods which they themselves have earned or which were intended for them and to which they have a right.