Nairobi, 23 May, 2023 / 8:40 pm (ACI Africa).
The Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD) has urged members of Caritas Africa, the development and humanitarian arm of the Catholic Church on the continent, to promote the virtue of listening.
In a statement shared with ACI Africa May 21, Michael Cardinal Czerny describes the ability to listen as a “fundamental dimension of the style that Pope Francis wants the whole Church to adopt.”
“Listening to reality is the only valid starting point of any project of social service,” Cardinal Czerny says, and adds that listening is part of the “heritage and style” of Caritas.
He continues, “Listening to local people is a strength to cherish and embrace, along with using social analysis to probe the causes, and the social teaching of the Church to reflect more deeply.”
The Czechian Cardinal made reference to the 2015 Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis “on care for our common home”, Laudato Si’, describing it as a call “to listen to the cry of the poor and the earth in Africa, marked by a very flawed and unfair model of development, and by inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic and by the many ongoing wars.”
