Pope Francis urged popular movements and organizations this Sunday to continue their social work in the midst of the world health crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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"If the fight against the coronavirus is a war, you are a true invisible army that fights in the most dangerous trenches," the Pope said in his message sent to popular movements and organizations this Sunday.
"An army with no other weapon than solidarity, hope and the sense of community that grows green these days when no one is saved alone."
"You are to me, as I told you in our meetings, true social poets, who from the forgotten peripheries create worthy solutions for the most pressing problems of the excluded."
In his message, Pope Francis acknowledges the difficulties that these entities are facing in obtaining financial resources to sustain their humanitarian work, but on many occasions they are ignored by the economic power.
However, they do not hide in the complaint: "they roll up their sleeves and continue to work for their families, for their neighborhoods, for the common good. This attitude of yours helps me, questions and teaches a lot."
"I think of the people, especially women, who multiply the bread in the community dining rooms cooking with two onions and a package of rice, a delicious stew for hundreds of children, I think of the sick, I think of the elderly," he said.
"They never appear in the mainstream media. Neither do peasant and family farmers who continue to work to produce healthy food without destroying nature, without hoarding it or speculating on the need of the people," Pope Francis said.
The Pope in a message to the world leaders indicated that "I hope that the governments understand that the technocratic paradigms (be state-centric, be market-centric) are not sufficient to address this crisis or the other great problems of humanity."
"Now more than ever, it is the people, the communities, the peoples who must be at the center, united to heal, care, share," he said.
The Pontiff said that "perhaps it is the time to think about a universal salary" for the informal, unemployed workers and the popular economy of the countryside and the cities that "have been excluded from the benefits of globalization."
This Sunday was the first time that he spoke about the role of social organizations in the context of global structural inequality, which increases with the expansion of this new disease.