VATICAN - Pope Francis has criticized Europe for a declining birthrate, a high percentage of unemployed people and discarding the elderly. He called Europe “tired,” saying it risks becoming a “throw-away culture.” Pope Francis: UN should encourage ‘legitimate’ redistribution of wealth. “Europe is tired. We have to help rejuvenate it, to find its roots. It’s true: it has disowned its roots. But we need to help it find them,” Francis said during his visit to the Community of Sant'Egidio in Rome’s Santa Maria in Trastevere Basilica. The community’s volunteers provide various forms of help to homeless, immigrants, elderly, disabled, and young people.
According to Francis, the treatment of the elderly and children “is an indicator showing the quality of a society.” “When the elderly are discarded, when the elderly are isolated and sometimes closed off without affection, it’s a bad sign!” said the Pope. Francis said that the youth and the elderly “carry history forward,” as young people give the society “biological strength" while old people “give them their memory.”
“When a society loses memory, it’s over. It’s terrible to see a society, a people, a culture that has lost memory,” he said, “A people that does not safeguard its elderly, that does not take care of its young people, is a people without a future, a people without hope.” Francis warned that with the current situation the European society may easily become a “throw-away culture.”
“Children are thrown away: no children. Just think of the growth rate of children in Europe: in Italy, Spain, France. The elderly are thrown away with these attitudes, behind which is a hidden euthanasia, a form of euthanasia: uselessness. That which isn’t useful is thrown away,” said Francis. The Pope also spoke about high rates of unemployment in Europe which affect young people in the union. “And today the crisis is so great that young people are discarded: when we think of these 75 million young people of 25 years or younger, who are ‘neither-nor’ - neither working, nor studying. It happens today, in this tired Europe, eh?” he said.
The Pope also slammed “the idol of money” in the region’s economy, which makes the poor “more and more poor, depriving them of the essentials, such as home and work.” Pope Francis has already carved himself a reputation of being unlike previous popes. He called for the legitimate redistribution of the world’s wealth in order to help the poor. Francis also attacked the global economic system, which shouldn’t be based on “a god called money” anymore.
The Catholic view on Europe.
1982 - "Old Europe…" 2014 - "Tired Europe…"
Back in 1982, Pope John Paul ll had this to say about Europe: “I, bishop of Rome and pastor of the Universal Church, from Santiago, address to you, old Europe, a cry full of love: Return to yourself! Be yourself! Discover your origins. Revive your roots. Experience again those authentic values that made your history glorious and your presence in other continents beneficial.” (www.catholicnewsagency.com)
Over 30 years have passed, but the message from Pope Francis is very similar: “Europe is tired. We have to help rejuvenate it, to find its roots. It’s true: it has disowned its roots. But we need to help it find them.”
While Pope John Paul ll quantified the situation, Pope Francis wants to do something about it. “Old Europe is tired… We need to help Europe find its roots” is the modern message. The message that he is sending out is that unity can be achieved - through the Catholic Church. The roots to which he refers are the roots of the Holy Roman Empire.
The warning did go out…
In the Plain Truth, March 1962 – ‘What is Germany’s Destiny?’ – Mr Armstrong wrote: “United within ancient boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire; united by the common spiritual bond of universal Catholicism …at least ten nations of modern Europe will march onto the scene of world history as the greatest single human force ever seen by man”!
The Plain Truth, August 1968 - “For decades we have been proclaiming the eventual creation of some form of united Europe ... we have proclaimed repeatedly that the ultimate unifying force would be religious.”
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
Read online or contact email to request a copy
