In a message to the Paris Forum on Peace, the pope painted a dire picture of a pre-coronavirus world dominated by corruption, war, and capitalistic oppression. “The reality we knew before the pandemic was that wealth and economic growth were reserved for a minority while millions of people were unable to meet the most basic needs and lead a dignified life,” Francis said, “a world in which our Earth was plundered by a myopic exploitation of resources, by pollution, by ‘disposable’ consumerism, and wounded by wars and experiments with weapons of mass destruction.” “Return to normal would also mean a return to old social structures inspired by self-sufficiency, nationalism, protectionism, individualism and isolation,” he added, “and excluding our poorest brothers and sisters. Is this a future we can choose?”… Our conscience calls us “not to follow the easy way of returning to a ‘normality’ marked by injustice, but to accept the challenge of assuming the crisis as a concrete opportunity for conversion, transformation, to rethink our lifestyle and our economic and social system,” he said. The pope’s vision for a new world begins with “a concrete collective commitment in favor of integral disarmament,” he noted. “World military spending has now exceeded the level recorded at the end of the ‘cold war’ and is systematically increasing every year.” – Source.

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