AMERICA/BOLIVIA - The President of the Bishops' Conference: "We are building a world and also a country upside down"

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La Paz (Agenzia Fides) - "We are building a world upside down and at the same time it seems that we are also building a country upside down, the innocent are condemned and the guilty manage to get free, in our country we do not see a firm decision for reform of justice": said Msgr. Aurelio Pesoa, O.F.M. Bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of Beni, President of the Bolivian Bishops' Conference, during the Mass celebrated on Sunday, October 2, in La Paz.
Recalling the Gospel page of the day, the Bishop invited people to imitate the attitude of the disciples who pray for faith: "This Sunday we are invited to pray asking for faith: «Lord, increase our faith». We really need faith because the difficulties of believing abound in our time". Msgr. Pesoa stressed that there is no progress in the area of justice; In the country, dialogue, truth, solidarity, and compassion seem to be moving further and further away, and one has the impression that the bad guys are doing it right, and on many occasions they go unpunished. Referring to the pandemic, the bishop stressed that for more than a year "we washed our hands, we disinfected everything we touched with fear, with the desire to preserve our lives. But all that hand washing, all those good intentions seem to have been quickly forgotten".
The Bishop of Beni has denounced "how institutions that defend freedom and people are often manipulated, without taking into account those who think differently", without respecting democratic norms. In this regard, he mentioned the recent election of the "Defensor del Pueblo" (see Fides, 28/09/2022) and reiterated: "The spirit of a true democracy that consists in governing for all, is seriously weakened and even damaged". In this framework, violence cannot be hidden, against women and between brothers, as in the war in Ukraine. "The world and the Bolivians watch this spectacle with impotence, and there is also a cry contained in humanity: Enough injustice, enough evil, enough actions without reason".
In the concluding part of his homily, Msgr. Pesoa took up the Word of God of the day, which invites "to trust in God, despite everything that seems to oppose faith, despite the fact that evil seems to triumph and injustice... the just is called to believe, to trust in God, who sees everything... The world, history, life, is in the hands of God. It is not in the hands of evil, of chaos, of the violent, of injustices". Faith is an extraordinary gift, it is strength in suffering, it is the rock on which life rests, "because it makes us go through the world with joy, even in persecution or difficulties. He who believes is a joyful person". (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 4/10/2022)