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Finally, and tastelessly, I don't think that there is any enthusiasm in Italy for a black African pope. Nearly a third of the electors 39 of the this time around work in the Curia — among them Turkson himself — and most will be Italians with an Italian attitude. None of the other candidates have attracted the same kind of media interest, though Cardinal Ouellet of Quebec , another early favourite, had his record subject to a rather devastating scrutiny in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
The problem is not that he is a bad man or even a bad archbishop — but the church he grew up in and was formed by has simply vanished. Even in his home village, the church at its centre was shut two years ago and taken over as a community centre instead.
If fighting back against secularisation is a priority for the conclave, the church in Quebec has a record of almost unremitting failure. It may not appear like that to the cardinals of the electorate, though. For me the most revealing news item since Benedict's resignation was his farewell speech to the clergy of Rome in which he distinguished between the Vatican council as God saw and intended it, and the "council of the media" which the rest of the world and most of the Catholic intelligentsia saw.
It is the "council of the media" which has politics and pressure groups, and the "council of the media" which "created many calamities, so many problems, so much misery, in reality: seminaries closed, convents closed, liturgy trivialised". I'm not a huge fan of my own trade. Therefore, there is a challenge. At the beginning of this pandemic in Europe, the European Union had a legislation which prevented it from sending equipment outside the Union to other countries because it was felt that they needed every bit of equipment here.
So you didn't get that when there was Ebola. That is something that has become real during this pandemic. Everybody is struck by this and everybody's struggling, finding ways of emerging from this, wanting to protect their citizens as best as possible. So there is a big difference there. The thing that is common to both pandemics was that all of them led to the collapse of economic structures, collapse of social values, social livelihood and all of that.
Joblessness was on the increase. People in their cultures got challenged in a very strong way. For example, in Africa, to think that a parent can die without a decent burial was something that was unheard of.
And that was a big challenge to several groups at the beginning. So these challenges, you know, are challenges that we also see in the days during this Covid crisis. Cardinal Turkson Not necessarily. Radical change is something that we as a Church or the Vatican, are imposing, and that's not it. We are not imposing any change. We're just inviting humanity to recognise the reality that we're dealing with, and what the challenges of Covid show us as a human family.
I mean, it's ironical that just when we, the human family, is involved in development and SDGs Sustainable Development Goals , we have a structure that brings everything down to its knees. So what is sustainable in our, if you want, our present forms of civilisation, everything that is being devolved so far? It's a call to recognise that our systems have not been robust enough. Our systems, at the end of the day, are not really sustainable. And such a recognition just invites us to recraft and relaunch everything that we've had.
So I think it's the revelation of the weaknesses in our human structures which we want to draw attention to and help us basically learn the lessons that we need to learn from the present situation. Cardinal Turkson That's already happening. That's already happening. So, just yesterday, I think, the Secretary of the Exchequer was presenting to the public in Great Britain about the new measures that are being adopted.
Companies are going to be receiving subsidies so that they do not lay off workers. But I think they are going to be supported by bonds. Now, from the use of bonds to support structures like this, the question that follows is: 'Who suffers from all of this? I know that we've tried to make a case for cancellation or the postponement of debt payment for a lot of developing countries so the governments can use the monies that they needed to pay to their lending groups in order to take care of this situation.
Well, we know that at the end of the day, there will be some differences in this regard. And still, there's the need for solidarity among humanity.
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