"Bring children close to the elderly", Pope asksAlejandro Monteverde (Sound of Freedom): "Children should be protected by the whole world".-(OSV News / Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service)
At the end of a Vatican summit on the rights of children, the Pope Francis announced that he would publish a papal document dedicated to children.
He described the February 3 summit, held in the frescoed halls of the Apostolic Palace, as a kind of "open observatory" in which the speakers explored "the reality of childhood throughout the world, a childhood that unfortunately is often wounded, exploited, denied."
Some 50 experts and leaders from around the world, who shared their experience and compassion, he said, also "elaborated proposals for the protection of children's rights, considering them not as numbers, but as faces."
"Children are watching us," he said, "to see how we are doing" in this world. The Pope said he planned to prepare a papal document "to give continuity to this commitment and promote it throughout the Church." The audience applauded the Pope and his brief closing remarks and gave him a standing ovation.
Promoting and defending children's rights
The one-day summit of world leaders, entitled "Love and Protect Them," discussed several issues of concern, including children's right to food, health care, education, family, leisure time and the right to live free from violence and exploitation. It was organized by the newly created Pontifical Committee for World Children's DayEnzo Fortunato, presided by the Franciscan Father Enzo Fortunato.
Among the guests were Nobel laureates, ministers and heads of state, leaders of international and non-profit organizations, senior Vatican officials and other experts.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in his speech: "The threat of ecological devastation - encompassing the climate crisis as well as the biodiversity crisis - is a terrible burden that we are imposing on our children.
He praised the Pope for stressing that "the spiritual crisis we face comes in part from the willful blindness that prevents so many from seeing the way our economic system is leading us toward exploitation of both people and the planet, at the expense of our moral values and the future of children."
Know the problems, know the solutions
"Those in power today must change our thinking; and our new thinking must lead to profound changes that transform our current systems of economics and politics, ushering in a more just and ecological system that places environmental and social justice at the center of our plans and efforts," Gore said. "We have all the solutions we need."
India's Kailash Satyarthi, co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize and an activist who campaigns against child labor in India and advocates for the universal right to education, said in his talk that while he trusts everyone's concern for children, he also feels ashamed.
"I'm embarrassed because we are failing our children every day. I'm ashamed to hear all these facts and statistics that I've been hearing" and talking about for the last 45 years," he said.
"We know the problems, we know the solutions," he said, but so far it has all remained rhetoric and words.
Compassion for children
The world's problem solvers "are not really honest (with) those who suffer the problems," he said, when they lack any sense of "moral responsibility and moral accountability."
"The solution lies in genuine feeling and connection" with each child as if he or she were one's own, he said. Only when people feel genuine compassion will they feel "the sincere urge to act urgently."
"We have to combat this threat (of child labor and poverty) and all other crises through compassion in action. We have to create a culture of problem solving. Let us globalize compassion because they are all our children," Satyarthi said.
This article is a translation of an article first published in OSV News. You can find the original article here.
