Cardinal Turkson urges bishops to lead social changes
To create social transformation by serving all sections of people.
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Bangalore:
A Vatican official has urged the Catholic bishops in India to choose service with humility as their model for creating a better nation.
Identify with people of goodwill options and commitments to bring about urgently needed social, political and economic changes in India, said Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
The first cardinal from Ghana stressed this at all three times in the first two days he addressed the 30th plenary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI).
The “Church’s role for a better India” is the main theme of the Feb. 1-8 meeting held at St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore, southern India.
The Vatican official told the participants -- 160 bishops and 20 CBCI officials – that his presence signifies the importance the Universal Church’s gives to the prelates’ efforts to build a better India.
According to him, what is “most important” in any attempt to create a better world is to address ethical and moral issues underlying forms of evil in the modern world.
The 63-year-old Vatican official admitted as a “daunting task” the attempt to address the “sickness of spirit” that developed countries have transported to developing countries.
He sees the “sickness of spirit” in people’s sense of self-sufficiency and self-centeredness, their belief that only majority consensus can set the moral norms and technology not morality, should guide progress.
“It is the need of the hour to revisit the one area where Christianity makes the best contribution: the area of ethics based on truth and love,” Cardinal Turkson said.
According to him, the Vatican is concerned about the “spiritual poverty” in rich nations as well as the material poverty in poor countries.
Defining spiritual poverty as lack of values, consistency, commitment, sincerity and good will, the Vatican official said it prompts the world to resolve material poverty by eliminating the poor instead of developing resources to help them get out of their situation.
He also sees a world of “broken trust” where people have lost their confidence in their leaders and their ability to bring social changes.
He quoted various Church documents to assert that holistic development and universal common good is possible only if they focus on people’s spiritual and moral welfare.
Cardinal Turkson warns that ignoring the spiritual aspect of development would hinder human progress as happened in the First World after the World War II.
Turning to India, Cardinal Turkson regretted that the country’s economic growth through globalization has not helped the poor.
He exhorted the prelates not to get discouraged by “the grinding poverty and rampant corruption” in the country and people’s “broken trust” in their leaders.
In stead, he wants them to lead the social transformation by serving all sections of people with humility as Christ washed his disciples’ feet.
An urgent task for the bishops in India, the cardinal added, is to inspire the country’s leaders and planners to gear all developmental works for the “well being and the common good of all.”
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