AMERICA - Message from the President of CELAM: In addition to pain and poverty, 2020 will also go down in history for great acts of Christian charity"

Trujillo (Agenzia Fides) - "We are ending a year that history will remember as a time marked by the global health crisis related to the coronavirus - Covid-19. Our region was also faced with this harsh reality", says Mgr. Miguel Cabrejos , Archbishop of Trujillo and President of CELAM, at the beginning of his message for the new year. In solidarity with those who are particularly hard hit by the effects of the pandemic he underlines: "we have lost many of our brothers and sisters; the number of infected continues to increase; thousands of people have lost their jobs and poverty has become catastrophic. In general, 2020 was a difficult year with a lot of suffering".
Despite death, pain, illness and poverty, the year that ended will go down in history also for the "great acts of humanism and Christian charity", says Archbishop Cabrejos, highlighting the values and feelings that emerged during the crisis: "great gestures of solidarity, generosity, a call to service, dedication to heroism, actions that write beautiful stories of authentic charity".
Closeness to the poor showed "the face of a Samaritan Church, which welcomes and heals a brother who has fallen on the street". This was demonstrated by all those initiatives that shed a light of hope for the most needy across the continent, under the direction of Caritas and the Episcopal Conferences, which Archbishop Cabrejos thanks for their commitment to face the challenges, putting the most vulnerable first: "together we have managed to save many lives and guarantee food and health for the poorest".
The pandemic also highlighted the major problems affecting the Latin American and Caribbean region, "such as the serious injustices and social inequalities, the fragility of our political systems with the still and open fight against corruption and the destruction of our environment… These are tasks and challenges that we cannot afford to overlook in the new year that begins".
The message highlights the priority tasks for 2021: "we must protect and accompany the lives of thousands of our brothers and sisters, strengthen the health system in order to successfully tackle the coronavirus pandemic and find a solution to the economic crisis that has impoverished thousands of families". Archbishop Cabrejos concludes that there is no doubt that "the hope of access to the vaccine for all is an urgent need and a requirement of all sectors of society". (CE) (Agenzia Fides, 4/1/2021)

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poverty

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corruption

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marginalization

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healthcare

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