Provided below are a few excerpts
from his earlier speeches/writings on key topics [bioethics, the family,
education, youth, political power, human trafficking, social justice, and other
themes]:
Abortion
Abortion is never a solution. On our
part, we must listen, support and understand in order to save two lives:
respect the smallest, defenseless human being, adopt measures that can preserve
his life, allow his birth and then be creative in seeking ways that will lead
to his full development (September 16, 2012).
Defense of Life
To those who were scandalized when
Jesus dined with sinners, with publicans, He said: "publicans and
prostitutes will precede you," they were the worst at the time. Jesus
doesn't put up with. They are the ones who have clericalized -- to use a word
that is understood -- the Lord's Church. They fill her with precepts, and I say
it with sorrow, and if it seems like a criticism or an offense, forgive me, but
in our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children
of unmarried mothers because they weren't conceived in the holiness of
matrimony. These are today's hypocrites. Those who have clericalized the
Church. Those who take the people of God away from salvation. And that poor
girl, who could have aborted her child, had the courage to bring him into the
world, and goes from parish to parish seeking someone who will baptize him
(September 2, 2012).
Education
When I saw the text before the Mass,
I began to think of the way those first communities lived and today's Mass. And
I wondered if our educational endeavor shouldn't be directed to achieving
harmony: harmony in all boys and girls who have been entrusted to us, inner
harmony, harmony of their personality. It is by working as a potter, imitating
God, shaping the life of these children, that we will be able to achieve
harmony, and rescue them from the dissonances that are always dark. Instead,
harmony is luminous, clear, it is light. The harmony of a growing heart, which
we support in this educational endeavor, is the one that must be achieved. (…)
I often think, when I see this very relative existentialism that is proposed to
youngsters everywhere and which has no point of reference, of our Buenos Aires
prophet: "Give him anything … everything is the same, after all we will
meet in the furnace." Then these youngsters, who have no idea of limits
and are hurtling toward the future, are in the furnace! Now! And we are going
to meet in the furnace! And in the future we'll have men and women in the
furnace! (April 18, 2012).
Human Trafficking
Today in this city we want the cry
heard, God's question: Where is your brother? May that question of God run
through all the city's neighborhoods, run through our hearts, and above all may
it also enter the hearts of the modern "Cains." Perhaps someone will
ask: What brother? Where is your slave brother, the one whom you are killing
every day in the clandestine workshop, in the network of prostitution, in the
huts of youngsters that you use for mendacity, as a "bell" for the
distribution of drugs, for robbery, prostituting them? Where is your brother
who, as homeless, has to work in secret because he is yet to be formalized.
Where is your brother? And, in face of this question, we can behave as the
priest did who passed by the one who was wounded, we can pretend we are
distracted, as the Levite did, looking away because the question is not
directed to me but to someone else. The question is for everyone! Because,
established in this city is the trade of persons, that aberrant crime of the
Mafia (as it was so rightly described a few days ago by an official): Mafia and
aberrant crime! (September 25, 2012).
Social Issues
Little by little we get used to
hearing and seeing through the media the black chronicle of contemporary
society, presented almost with perverse rejoicing, and we also get used to
touching it and feeling it around us and in our own flesh. The drama is on the
street, in the neighborhood, in our home, and why not say it, in our heart. We
coexist with violence that kills, which destroys families, fuels wars and
conflicts in so many countries worldwide. We coexist with envy, hatred,
calumny, worldliness in our heart. The suffering of the innocent and peaceful
does not cease to strike us, contempt for the rights of the most fragile
persons and peoples who are not that far from us, the reign of money with its
demonic effects, such as drugs, corruption, the trade of persons, including
children, together with material and moral poverty are the current currency.
The destruction of fitting work, painful emigrations and the lack of a future
are also added to this symphony. Our errors and sins as Church are not excluded
from this great picture. The most personal egoisms are justified and not
because of this are they lesser, the lack of ethical values in a society that
metastasizes in families, which in the coexistence of neighborhoods, towns and
cities speak to us of our limitation, of our weakness, and of our inability to
transform this numberless list of destructive realities. (April 20, 2011)
Evangelization
It is not enough that our truth is
orthodox and our pastoral action effective. Without the joy of beauty, truth
becomes cold and even displaced and arrogant, as we see happens in the speech
of many bitter fundamentalists. It seems they chew ashes instead of tasting the
glorious sweetness of the Truth of Christ, who illumines with meek light the
whole of reality, assuming it as it is every day. Without the joy of beauty,
the work for good becomes somber efficiency, as we see happening in the action
of many activists who are carried away. It would seem that they are cloaking
reality with statistical mourning, instead of anointing it with the interior
oil of joy which transforms hearts, one by one, from within (April 22, 2011).
Defense of Marriage
At stake is the identity and survival
of the family: father, mother and children. At stake is the life of so many
children who will be discriminated in advance, depriving them of the human
maturation that God wills to happen with a father and a mother. At stake is a
frontal rejection of God's law, imprinted, moreover, in our hearts. Let us not
be naïve: it is not about a simple political struggle, it is the pretension to
destroy God's plan. It is not a question of a mere legislative project (the
latter is only the instrument) but of a "move" of the father of lies
who tries to confuse and deceive the children of God (July 8, 2010).
Social Justice
It is justice that rejoices the
heart: when there is enough for everyone, when one sees that there is equality,
equity, and each one has what he needs. When one sees that there is enough for
all, if one is a good person, one feels a special joy in the heart. Each one's
heart is enlarged and is fused with that of others and it makes us love the
homeland. The homeland flourishes when we see "noble equality on the
throne," as our national anthem well states. Injustice, instead, darkens
everything. How sad it is when one sees that there is enough for all and yet
this is not achieved (…) To say "all the youngsters" is to say all
the future. To say "all the retired" is to recount our whole
history." Our people know that the whole is greater than the parts, and
that is why we ask for "bread and work for all." How contemptible,
instead, is the one who hoards only for his today, the one who has a small,
egotistical heart and thinks only of fingering a slice that he won't take with
him when he dies. Because no one takes anything. I have never seen a moving
truck following a funeral cortege. My grandmother used to say to us: "the
shroud has no pockets" (August 7, 2012).
Faith
The experience of faith places us in
the experience of the Spirit, marked by the capacity to begin our journey.
There is nothing more opposed to the Spirit than to install oneself, to be
shut-in on oneself. When one does not pass through the door of Faith, the door
closes, the Church closes, the heart withdraws into itself and fear and the
evil spirit sour the Good News. When the chrism of faith dries and becomes
rancid the evangelizer no longer infects but loses his fragrance, constituting
himself often a source of scandal and alienation for many.
He who believes is the recipient of
the Beatitude that runs through the Gospel, and that resonates throughout
history, on Elizabeth's lips: "happy are you for you believed," or
addressed by Jesus himself to Thomas: "Happy are those who believe without
seeing!" (June 9, 2012)
Political Power
The "madness" of the
commandment to love, which the Lord proposes and defends in our being, also
dispels the other daily "madnesses," which deceive and harm, and end
up by impeding the realization of the nation's project. They are relativism and
power as the sole ideology. Relativism that, with the excuse of respect for differences,
homogenizes by transgression and demagogy, allowing everything so as not to
assume the vexation which calls for mature courage to support values and
principles. Curiously, relativism is absolutist and totalitarian, it does not
allow anyone to differ from relativism itself, in no way does it differ from
"be quiet" or "don't get involved." Power as sole ideology
is another lie. If ideological prejudices deform the way one sees one's
neighbor and society, given one's own certainties and fears, power as the sole
ideology accentuates the persecuting and prejudiced focus that "all
positions are power schemes" and "all seek to dominate others."
Thus social trust is eroded that, as I pointed out, is the root and fruit of
love (May 25, 2012).
Crisis
The symptoms of disenchantment are
varied, but perhaps the clearest are the "custom-made" enchantments:
the enchantment of technology which always promises better things; the
enchantment of an economy, which offers almost unlimited possibilities in all
aspects of life, to those who succeed in being included in the system; the
enchantment of minor religious proposals, according to the need. Disenchantment
has an eschatological dimension. It attacks indirectly, putting a stop to any
definitive attitude and, in its place, suggests those little enchantments that
are like "islands" or "truces" in face of the lack of hope,
given the pace of the world in general. Hence, the only human attitude to break
the spell of enchantments and disenchantments is to place ourselves before
ultimate things and ask ourselves in hope: Are we ascending from good to better
or descending from bad to worse? Then doubt arises. Can we answer? As
Christians, do we have the word and the gestures that indicate the way of hope
for our world? Are we, like the disciples of Emmaus and those who stayed in the
Cenacle, the first to need help? (May 8, 2011).
Humility
The Gospel passage speaks to us of
humility. Humility reveals to human self-conscious littleness the potentials it
has in itself. In fact, the more conscious we are of our gifts and limitations,
both together, the freer we will be from the blindness of arrogance. And just
as Jesus praises the Father for this revelation to the little ones, we should
also praise the Father for having May's sun shine on those who trusted in the
gift of liberty, liberty that sprouted in the heart of a nation that wagered on
greatness without losing sight of its littleness (May 25, 2011).
Simple People
The wisdom of thousands of women and
men who queue to travel and to work honestly, to bring daily bread to the
table, to save and, little by little, buy bricks to improve their home …
Thousands upon thousands of children with their pinafores go through passages
and streets coming and going from home to school, and from school to home.
Meanwhile the grandparents who accumulate popular wisdom, get together to share
and recount anecdotes. The crises and manipulations will pass; the contempt of
the powerful will corner them in misery, they will be offered the suicide of
drugs, of lack of control and violence; they will be tempted by the hatred of
vengeful resentment. But the humble, no matter what their position or social
condition, will appeal to the wisdom of the one who feels himself a child of a
God who is not distant, who accompanies them with the Cross and encourages them
with the Resurrection in those miracles, the daily achievements, which
encourage them to rejoice in sharing and celebrating (May 25, 2011).
New Evangelization
God lives in the city and the Church
lives in the city. The mission is not opposed to learning from the city – from
its cultures and changes – while we go out to preach the Gospel. And this is
fruit of the Gospel itself, which interacts with the earth on which the seed
falls. Not only is the modern city a challenge but the whole city, every
culture, every mentality and every human heart has been, is and will be a
challenge. Contemplation of the Incarnation, which Saint Ignatius presents in
the Spiritual Exercises, is a good example of the attitude we propose here. An
attitude that is not bogged down in a dualism, which constantly comes and goes,
of diagnostics for planning, but is dramatically involved in the reality of the
city and is committed to it in action. The Gospel is an accepted kerygma that
compels to be transmitted. Mediations are elaborated while we live and coexist
(August 25, 2011).
Mary
God was lacking something to be able
to enter humanly in our history: He needed a mother, and He asked us for her.
She is the Mother whom we look to today, the daughter of our people, the
handmaid, the pure one, the only one of God; the discreet one who makes room
for her Son to fulfill the sign, the one who is always making possible this
reality but not as owner or as protagonist, but as handmaid, the star that is
able to go out so that the Sun can manifest itself. So is Mary's mediation to
which we refer today. Mediation of the woman who did not renege her maternity,
she assumed it from the beginning; a maternity with a double birth, one in Bethlehem
and the other on Calvary; a maternity that contains and supports her Son's
friends, He who is the only reference until the end of time. And so Mary
continues among us, "situated in the very center of that 'enmity' of the
proto-Gospel, of that struggle that accompanies the history of humanity"
(Cf. Redempt. Mater 11). A Mother who makes spaces possible for Grace to come.
Grace that revolutionizes and transforms our existence and our identity: the
Holy Spirit who makes us adoptive children, frees us from all slavery and, in a
real and mystical possession, gives us the gift of liberty and cries out, from
within us, the invocation of the new belonging: Father! (November 7, 2011).
Thank you
