“The violence about women is satanic and the overcrowding of prisons it’s inhumane “. He doesn’t mince words Pope francesco by answering the questions of four people who have lost everything but the hope of redeeming themselves. Bergoglio, in special Rg5 Francesco and the invisibles. The Pope meets the last ones, conceived and edited by the Vatican expert Mediaset, Fabio Marchese Ragona, gives a voice to those who are victims of the throwaway culture, as the Pontiff himself often denounces. There are in front of Francesco Giovanna, a mother of four victims of domestic violence who became jobless and homeless during the pandemic; Maria, a homeless woman who lived on the street for years before being taken in a Palazzo Best, the Vatican dormitory managed by the Community of Sant’Egidio; Pierdonato, a lifer who has already served 25 years in prison and has radically changed his life; And Maristella, an 18-year-old scout representing all those kids who felt abandoned with the lockdown and lost their contacts with friends and schoolmates.
“It is very, very big – says the Pope speaking of femicide – the number of women beaten, abused at home, even by their husbands. The problem is that for me it is almost satanic, because it is profiting from weakness of someone who cannot defend himself, can only stop the strokes. It is humiliating, very humiliating. It’s humiliating when a dad or mom gives one slap in face to a child, it is very humiliating and I always say that, never slap in the face. How come? Why the dignity it’s the face “. Francesco reports that the overcrowding of prisons “it is certainly a wall, it is not human! Any conviction for a crime shop assistant must have a hope, a window. A prison without a window is wrong, it’s a wall. A cell without a window is wrong. Window not necessarily physical, window existential, spiritual window. To be able to say: ‘I know that I will go out, I know that I could do that or that’. For this the church it is against the death penalty, because in death there is no window, there is not hope, a life closes. There is hope on the other side, but there is not here. For this the prison it must have a window ”. Bergoglio also underlines that “we are entering a culture of indifference where we try to distance ourselves from real problems, from the pain of lack of housing, from the lack of work. Indeed, with this pandemic, the problems have increased because those who offer are knocking on the door money on loan: the usurers. A poor person, a person in need, falls into the hands of usurers and loses everything, because these do not forgive. It is cruelty above cruelty, this I say to attract people’s attention not to be naive; wear is not a way out of the trouble, wear brings you new problems “.
And he says: “When I confess the people I ask: ‘But you help i poor? ‘. ‘Yes, I’ll give it to youalms‘, someone says. ‘But when you give alms, do you touch it or throw it away without touching?’. ‘I didn’t notice, I don’t know’. ‘When you give alms, do you look at the eyes and at the poor man?’. Many say no. With this alms what are you doing dry, mechanically, you discharge yourself of guilt. But it is not human. Instead when you look a poor man in the face, your heart changes because it has reached the ‘sacramento of the poor ‘, we say’ sacramental ‘so that they do not say that I am one heretic, because the look of a poor person changes you. This throwaway culture is not only with the poor, with the people who have need: how many times in a family there is that reality of discarding the old, discarding the grandparents. I understand that there are cases of illness that cannot live in the family, I understand that, but when automatically at a certain age you look for a retirement home to put in storage, not rest, in storage, your old man, grandparents, you show something ruthless “. Finally, the Pope recalls that “the Covid has put us all in crisis. One way out of the crisis is to get embittered and a bitterness is often done away with. The number of suicides has increased so much with the crisis. One way out is to say I’m done and we’re done with history, but what happens when we no longer have the strength to resist the crisis and we turn the crisis into conflict? There crisis it is open, the conflict closes you “.