Only a united global family can fix crises, archbishop says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- One of the most serious emergencies today is that the world forgets about and does not attend to the common good and the needs of regular people, especially poor people, the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life said.

"It is an emergency that risks being tragic because the common good cannot be decided or managed by just a few people," especially, as it is now perhaps, by "the richest and the most powerful," Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia said at a news conference at the Vatican March 3.

Politics and many other institutions are at risk when they are "in the hands of a few and forgetting the common good of the entire planet," he said.

Pope Francis, instead, from the very start of his pontificate, has been advocating that truth can be found in the "inner depth of the people," the archbishop said. The entirety of a people and community, but especially the poor "have a light that needs to be revealed in order to counter the power of the few."

The archbishop's comments came during his presentation of the academy's 30th general assembly being held in Rome March 3-5. More than 130 academicians and another 200 guests were attending the conference dedicated to addressing not only the "apocalyptic" outlook and attitude present in the world today but also trends putting people and the planet increasingly in danger.

Titled, "The End of the World: Crises, Responsibilities, Hopes," the assembly brought together Nobel Prize laureates, planetologists, physicists, biologists, paleoanthropologists, theologians and historians to look at how everyone can and must come together to "save the world."

Pope Francis sent a written message to participants, dated Feb. 26 from Gemelli Hospital, noting the multiple crises facing humanity "in which wars, climate change, energy problems, epidemics, the migratory phenomenon and technological innovation converge."

The multidisciplinary and global nature of these "critical issues, which currently touch on various dimensions of life, lead us to ask ourselves about the destiny of the world and our understanding of it," he wrote.

People must not remain immobile, "anchored in our certainties, habits and fears," he wrote, but must listen carefully to the world of science and encounter people and their stories.

Everyone and everything in the world is related and interconnected, which "can provide us with signs of hope," he said.

Hope is not just an individual conviction, he wrote, it also has a communal dimension where the whole human family can bond together to face today's "complex and planetary crisis" with "a global reach."

The pope lamented the "progressive irrelevance of international bodies, which are also undermined by short-sighted attitudes, concerned with protecting particular and national interests."

"And yet we must continue to commit ourselves with determination for 'more effective world organizations, equipped with the power to provide for the global common good, the elimination of hunger and poverty, and the sure defense of fundamental human rights,'" he wrote, citing his 2020 encyclical letter, "Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship."

Multilateral, global approaches that do not "depend on changing political circumstances or the interests of the few" are needed, he wrote. These approaches are more stable and effective, but it is "an urgent task which regards the whole of humanity."

Archbishop Paglia said at the news conference that the weakening of international agencies and institutions is just one sign of the current trend to forget about or ignore the people. This leads to "solutions" that hardly take into account the common good of everyone, particularly the poorest countries.

The diminishing trust in and promotion of international bodies, he said, is part of a  broader "shattering" and fragmentation of peoples, communities, nations and the world.

There are people suffering from a kind of "myopia" in which they believe they are "the eternal fathers and no longer fragile," he said.

It is "the absolute primacy of the ego, the dictatorship of the self and the ego, which weakens everything else," he said. The situation worsens when these super-egos become wedded to money, which "becomes the new idol" that has many "foolish servants."

This is why the Pontifical Academy for Life is made up of experts from and dedicated to multiple disciplines, he said. "Because we are convinced that the 'we' all together will save us. And not the 'I' of someone else."