Pope calls for end to ‘pandemic of poverty’ after virus

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis called on Saturday for a “more just and equitable society” in the post-coronavirus world, and for people to act to “end the pandemic of poverty”.

“Once we emerge from this pandemic, we will not be able to keep doing what we were doing, and as we were doing it. No, everything will be different,” he said, speaking in Spanish in a video message to mark the feast of Pentecost.

“From the great trials of humanity — among them this pandemic — one emerges better or worse. You don’t emerge the same. I ask this of you: how do you want to come out of it? Better or worse?” he added.

People needed to open their minds and hearts to learn the central lesson from this crisis: “We are one humanity,” said the pope.

“We know it, we knew it, but this pandemic that we are living through has made us experience it in a much more dramatic way,” he added.

Now there was a duty to build a new reality particularly for the poorest, who had been discarded, the pope said.

“All the suffering will be of no use if we do not build together a more just, more equitable, more Christian society, not in name but in reality,” he added.

He called for action to “end the pandemic of poverty in the world”.

GSG