Since the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic, His Holiness Pope Francis has repeatedly called for taking a thorough and comprehensive overview of the post-pandemic period while realizing the grave damage inflicted on the global world economy that would have negative repercussions leading to starvation, poverty, unemployment, violence, and social instabilities.
On September 2, 2020 he called for a better post-pandemic world stating: “Solidarity today is the road to take towards a post-pandemic world, toward the healing of our interpersonal and social sicknesses. It is a solidarity guided by faith that enables us to translate the love of God in our globalized culture, not by building towers or walls that divide and then crumble but by interweaving communities and sustaining processes of growth that are truly human and solid.”
The Pope also called for solidarity among the world peoples so as to find a way that helps them get extricated from the bleak problems looming in the horizon.In a video-message he sent to participants in the 16th edition of the GLOBSEC Bratislava Forum, where political leaders and ministers are focusing on rebuilding the post-pandemic world, the Pope invited policymakers to develop an idea of recovery that aims to rebuild, but also to correct what was not working even before the advent of the Coronavirus and that contributed to aggravating the crisis.
Stressing that he sees a model of economic and social life, characterized by so many inequalities and selfishness, in which a tiny minority of the world's population owns the majority of goods, and is often not hesitating to exploit other people, he invited world peoples to take steps forward remembering that “no one saves themselves” and that “the crisis opens the way to a future that recognizes the true equality of every human being.”
He urgently called for action stressing the need to undertake an ecological conversion as “the overall vision includes the perspective of creation as a "common home".
On the other hand, the Pope made an earth-shaking remark on June 15, 2021 when he sent a video-message to participants in the 16th edition of the GLOBSEC Bratislava Forum where political leaders and ministers are focusing on rebuilding the post-pandemic world. He said, “Convert death into life, weapons into food.” This remark is reminiscent of a verse in the Holy Bible which says, “And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)
In the aftermath of pandemic, it is an exigent need for the world leaders to turn their attention to the deteriorating world affairs that affect every walk of life by silencing guns, abstaining from beating the drums of war that currently reverberate in various parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East. It is due time to heal the rift in international relations and steer attention to breathing life into constructive projects that create job opportunities, curtail unemployment, increase food production, reverse the environmental damage inflicted over the past decades on our common home, and help ensure a better future for the generations to come.
Let world leaders beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks so that all nations will stockpile cordial relations based on freedom, dignity, equality, as well provide equal opportunities to everyone so as provide an environment conducive to constructive cooperation designed to ensure the progress and prosperity of the entire humanity.
