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“It’s not enough to shoulder our brother or sister’s cross, we have to tell those creating the crosses to desist”. Father Oreste Benzi
Our way of being with the poor in any social context and living conditions is direct sharing. It is born of love for the poor and it also generates love for the poor. It is therefore this sharing that drives us to get rid of the causes of need. Direct sharing itself encompasses justice. This is why our commitment to removing the causes of marginalisation and injustice is strictly linked to the life of sharing, rendering it full and credible.
“Politics is one of the highest forms of charity because it seeks the common good.” Pope Paul VI
Politics is the every citizen’s contribution to the common good, a necessary condition for the maximum development of the human person. Therefore, members of the Community seek to be present, whenever possible, where decisions are made about everyone’s life, doing this as citizens with particular care for the least.
The duty of the Service for Political Intervention is to support and stay in contact with those members of the Community involved in politics, and to support the work of all the Community services to remove the causes of injustice and marginalisation. It is therefore within the gift of the political service to remove the causes of injustice, in the knowledge that effective action to remove these causes comes from the inner life, drawing upon the water of life that is the Word.
The political service therefore has two principal tasks:
- To encourage and prepare the Community as a whole, through the relevant study to gain knowledge of the themes they have to deal with, making them ready to add reason to the hope that we have been given.
- Work as advocates: bringing the cries of the poor to the powerful, working out practical, attainable proposals to restore to the poor the dignity that has been stolen from them and putting these proposals forward to governments and legislators.
The Pope John XXII Community is not tied to any single ideology or party-political organisation, rather we promote and encourage our members to make civic, political and administrative commitments. Community members who are actively involved in politics do so as a personal choice and do not in any way represent the Community.
The Pope John XXIII Community encourages study and practical ways of living in order to bring about the Society of Gratuitousness, in which everyone holds the good of the others and in which the good of all is also the good of the individual. It is an inclusive vision of society in which work, the economy and social organisation are at the service of human beings, above all when their life is fragile and difficult to sustain.
