LS

In Ravenstein hebben we gesproken over armoede. Een van de subgroups stelde voor om de Paus te steunen bij zijn bezoek aan de Verenigde Naties, maar met een veel wijder platform dan de Katholieke Kerk, maar met alle kerken en godsdiensten en alle mensen van goede wil. Onze subgroep heeft Wouter van Ginneken gevraagd een ontwerp te maken. U vindt dat hieronder. Wees zo goed en draag een steentje bij met aanvullingen, wijzigingen, en critiek. Nogmaals dit is de eerste steen. Wij hopen het samen te doen.

Jac Lampe

Ontwerp van de brief aan de Paus door Wouter van Ginneken

Letter to Pope Francis

Dear Holy Father (klopt dat?), 

On Saturday 11 April 2015 a group of 40 Jesuits and ex-Jesuits came together in Ravenstein, the Netherlands, for our annual meeting.

This year we focused on the question of poverty.

Three of our participants gave short presentations

· on how to eradicate poverty in the world,

· on our Jesuit Society’s vision on poverty and spirituality

· on our personal commitment towards people living in poverty.  

In the further discussions in sub-groups, we thought about ways in which our Catholic Church could contribute to these issues, and we decided that our first personal commitment should be to be more in contact with people living in poverty.  We were very much inspired by the title song for your visit in The Philippines at the beginning of this year, which was entitled: “We are all God’s children”, and by the phrase: “Choose to be brave, fight for their rights (of the poor)”. This is central to the Good News that Jesus has brought us.

We also discussed the Sustainable Development Goals that the United Nations have developed and which will be discussed at the UN Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda on 25-27 September 2015. We thought that your presence – or at least your support – would send a very strong signal to the world and to the participating governments. That signal could be even stronger if it were delivered together with leaders of other Christian churches, other world religions, such as Islam, and other world spiritual movements, such as Buddhism.

If you were interested in sending such a signal, then we would like you to emphasize two things. First of all, that the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) should be human rights based. Poverty is a violation of human rights, and can be eradicated when all have universal and guaranteed access to income security and essential social services.  National governments and the international community are accountable for realizing these rights.  Secondly, our world has now the resources to eradicate poverty, but these are very unequally distributed. We need greater world-wide tax justice as well as support for low-income countries to eradicate poverty by 2030.

We sincerely hope that you will be able to contribute to strengthening the rights-based approach to the post-2015 development agenda, and we pray that more and more people will be inspired by the Good News of the gospel to eradicate poverty by 2030.

17.4.2015