Customise Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorised as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyse the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customised advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyse the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Pope: Evangelization without solidarity for oppressed is unacceptable

VATICAN CITY – It is “unacceptable” to evangelize without addressing the urgent problems of poverty, injustice and oppression, Pope Benedict XVI said.

To not be concerned with life’s temporal problems would be to forget the Gospel teaching to love one’s neighbor who is suffering and in need and “it would not be in harmony with Jesus’ life,” which combined proclaiming the Good News and curing people of disease and illness, the pope said in his message for World Mission Sunday 2011.

The annual observance will be marked Oct. 23 at the Vatican and in most countries.

In his message, released in Italian Jan. 25 at the Vatican, the pope focused on the responsibility of every baptized Christian to announce the Gospel message to all men and women in every corner of the world.

“We cannot remain untroubled by the fact that after 2,000 years, there are still people who don’t know Christ and still have not heard his message of salvation,” the pope said.

Just as important is the cultural transformation of traditionally Christian countries that have forgotten or abandoned the Christian faith and are now “resistant to opening themselves up” to the dimension of religion and belief, it said.

Globalization and relativism have fueled the spread of a mentality and a lifestyle that “exalts the search for well-being and easy money and having one’s career and success be the goals of life, even at the expense of moral values,” the papal message said.

Bringing the Gospel to everyone is “the most precious service the church can give to humanity and to every individual on a quest for profound reasons to live life to the full,” it said.

But evangelization is “a complex process” that includes solidarity with those in need, the papal message said.

Catholics are called to support foreign missions and to promote the human person, it said.

Pope Paul VI underlined that is was “unacceptable that evangelization would ignore questions concerning human development, justice and liberation from every form of oppression, obviously with respect for autonomy in the political sphere,” it said.

Catholic Review

The Catholic Review is the official publication of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

En español »