For many years, Fraternite Notre Dame has been working
in Europe, Africa, the United States, the Caribbean, Mongolia, and
in such countries in crisis as Romania, Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo,
El Salvador… serving the most destitute, with no distinction
of race, class, sex, age, religion or belief (in hospitals, dispensaries,
soup kitchens, schools, orphanages, programs for the homeless, street
children, the sick with AIDS…) The Religious Order was founded
about 30 years ago by the Most Reverend Bishop Jean Marie Roger Kozik.
During various humanitarian missions,
we noticed on the field that those really outcast from societies are
the poorest. Such social discrimination, which knows no frontiers,
showed us men, women and children living in sub-human conditions:
for instance, in Mongolia, where thousands of people live in the sewers
of the capital.
This past century witnessed extraordinary
scientific progress, but still there are too many rejected people.
All social ills: like children used as servants in Haiti, families
broken up because of drugs or alcohol in France or in the United States,
malnourished children, leper children in Niger; all these show us
that true progress in society will be possible only when we decide
to grant major importance to the respect of the human person itself.
In order for a human being to enjoy freedom, and even notice that
he can have Liberty, he first needs to be given proper access to a
minimum of vital food, hygiene and health care.
All what we heard in the exposés
is very interesting, but the critical situation of millions of people
living under poverty levels should be granted more emphasis. The Most
Reverend Bishop Jean Marie Kozik is deeply concerned with this particular
aspect of the dignity of the human person, and this can be seen in
all the centers he created in various parts of the world.
I would like to get your attention also
on the problem of xenophobia applied to racial, cultural and religious
discrimination. Among others, there are two dangers:
Firstly, extremist behaviors exemplified
by some movements, which represent a danger, when they are ready to
use violence as a way to express their disagreement with other movements.
And secondly, the intolerance of some
major religious groups or churches, that have been enjoying some standing
for centuries, and have managed some appropriation of political, economic
and judicial powers, or even over the media, crushing minorities in
this way, through modern means of inquisition, blacklisting, denigration,
open or sly persecutions, and manipulating of public opinion.
We all know that there is no better
preaching than through example. Therefore, it is up to us to trigger
positive actions, non-racist, but tolerant, which we long to see happening
with tomorrow's men, these men of tomorrow we all would like to be
men of goodwill, with no preconceived ideas, but at the service of
all.
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