Mexico City (Fides Service) - At the end of the 15th Latin American Caritas Congress and the 2nd Continental Meeting of Social Pastoral- Caritas at the offices of the Mexican Bishops Conference 19-24 March, participants from North and South America issued a message "Nuestra Speranza: una America solidale senza esclusion". The message highlights that the American continent "experiences with sadness in daily life and in its structures the impact of savage and excluding capitalism caused by the concentration in a few hands of resources destined according to God's will, for the common good". The participants affirm: "We are aware that violence is manifested also through economic policies that deny hope and right to a worthy life. Therefore we manifest our common commitment to building economies that affirm life, solicit just economic and political systems and are truly at the service of the people, the most needy in particular."
Faced with many situations, which give rise to desperation, the congress participants indicate some signs for hope:
- Local organisations are promoting sustainable economies, ecologically balanced and socially just, that create new relations starting from the experience of economy in solidarity;
- Social movements resist with courage a vision of economy based in the application of market law which fails to take into account the moral norms and tramples on the human person;
- Church realities that flank efforts to render possible a different world, a world which distributes and shares, starting from the logic of social justice and solidarity".
The message also recalls that in the most difficult situations and on the edge of desperation, the American people have been able to put in act the dynamic of love. Therefore "we refuse to surrender before inhuman poverty; solidarity is the source of permanent life in every poor community on the continent. We refuse to surrender before violence. We work together intensely to make possible globalisation of solidarity with the weapons of peace, justice and truth, reparation and brotherhood". The message also affirms the value of dialogue undertaken between the peoples of the north and south of the continent, so often called for by Pope John Paul II and it underlines a leading role for the women of the continent, as witnesses of the tenderness and power of God's love (RZ) (Fides Service 27/3/2003 EM lines 34 Words: 406)