This second part of the IV World Meeting of Popular Movements (IV EMMP) will take place on Saturday, October 16 at 14h (CEST) and will feature an intervention by Pope Francis, who will deliver a message to the participants. The transmission of this meeting can be followed through the social networks and channels of the Popular Movements and through the Vatican YouTube channels of Vatican News and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
This fourth meeting comes on the heels of a working meeting last July that brought together representatives of popular movements from America (North, Central, and South), Europe, Africa, and Asia. That meeting discussed the impact of COVID-19 on the most humble, disenfranchised, and discarded workers, and the dilemmas facing humanity today, including the 3Ts: land, roof, and work, the three “sacred rights” that have shaped the dialogues with Francis in the three previous meetings (Vatican, 2014 and 2016; Santa Cruz de la Sierra, 2015).
In Fratelli Tutti, Francis incorporates the 3Ts into the Church’s social magisterium as basic criteria of social justice, noting that “it is possible to long for a planet that ensures land, shelter and work for all” (n. 127). In the encyclical, the Pope refers extensively to the popular movements, which he has “decided to accompany in their autonomous journey” 1(n. 152) because of their practices of solidarity “so special among those who suffer” (n. 116); because of their sense of community in caring for one another (n. 152); because of their creativity in putting into practice the principles of social justice (n. 152); and because of the creativity and commitment of the popular movements; for the creativity and implementation of “various forms of popular economy and community production” which must be counted on “for integral human development”, with the awareness “that without them democracy atrophies, becomes a nominalism, a formality, loses representativeness, becomes disembodied because it leaves out the people in their daily struggle for dignity, in the construction of their destiny”. (n 169). With this in mind, Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson, recognizes the Popular Movements “as a source of change, we usually call them ‘apostles of change’ because they are those who are in direct contact with those who suffer injustice. The Popular Movements are making history, fostering change, and the challenge is to overcome the structural causes of poverty and injustice. Thus, Cardinal Turkson urges us to “join together to promote the common agenda of the Popular Movements. It is not only a struggle against an economic structure but also against political structures, proposing to revitalize the systems in order to achieve a world of justice and equality”.
Program
The IV EMMP will be held on Zoom in Spanish, Italian, English, Portuguese and French and will be broadcast on the YouTube channels of Popular Movements, Vatican News, and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. It will last approximately two hours.
The PMs will share with the Pope the work and struggles carried out during the hardest moments of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the projection of the video “The Power of We” and will present him with the document “Save Humanity and the Planet,” a synthesis of their dialogues on the dilemmas of humanity. For his part, Francis will deliver a message to all the participating delegates.
Participation
These meetings are a space of fraternity that brings together representatives of popular movements from all latitudes of the planet, from different religions and cultures. Delegates from North, Central, and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania will participate in this 4th meeting. They are cartoneros, recyclers, street vendors, seamstresses, artisans, fishermen, peasants, builders, miners, workers of recovered enterprises, all kinds of cooperatives, workers of popular trades, Christian workers of various trades and professions, workers of neighborhoods and slums who practice the culture of encounter and walk together.
For seven years now, the poor, the neglected and excluded, coming from the urban, rural, and labor peripheries, have been meeting in the EMMP in dialogue with Pope Francis, to make heard and give visibility to the concerns about the increasing injustices caused by the capitalist and exclusionary system. They meet to reflect and share their social struggles, organized from the community, and above all to propose alternative solutions and new forms of struggle, in defense of the rights that call them, mainly Land, Housing, and Work.
1 https://www.vaticannews.va/es/papa/news/2019-08/papa-francisco-movimientos-populares-libro-america-latina.html
