‘Fratelli tutti’ - A short summary of Pope Francis’ Encyclical

With COVID-19 pandemic as the backdrop, Holy Father Francis clarifies how the global health emergency has helped demonstrate that “no one can face life in isolation”. It is time for us to “dream, then, as a single human family” in which we are “brothers and sisters all” (Par 8). Therefore, it is heartening to see the Holy Father provides tangible ways to build a more just and fraternal world in our ordinary relationships, in social life, politics and institutions. He promotes a universal aspiration towards fraternity and friendship and uses this encyclical to “address his brothers and sisters and proposed to them a way of life marked by the flavour of the Gospel”.

In the first of eight chapters, titled ‘Dark Clouds over a Closed World’, the Holy Father reflects on the manipulation and deformation of concepts such as democracy, freedom, justice; he points to the loss of the meaning of the social community and history; he indicates how selfishness and indifference towards the common good have created a prevalence of a market logic based on profit and the culture of waste; he speaks of unemployment, racism, poverty, and the disparity of rights and its aberrations such as slavery, trafficking, women subjugated and then forced to abort, and organ trafficking (see Par 10-24). He speaks about global problems that cry out for global actions, and he sounds the alarm against a “culture of walls” that favours the proliferation of organised crime, fuelled by fear and loneliness (see Par 27-28).

The second chapter, ‘A stranger on the road’, is dedicated to the image of the Good Samaritan. The Holy Father calls all people of goodwill to be the Good Samaritan in an unhealthy society that rejects suffering and has lost the know-how of caring for the frail and vulnerable (see Par 64-65). Since love builds bridges and “we were made for love” (Par 88), the Pope exhorts us to recognise Christ in the face of every excluded person (see Par 85).

The third chapter continues the theme of human capacity to love. In the third chapter, ‘Envisaging and engendering an open world’, he exhorts us to go outside the self in order to find “a fuller existence in another” (Par 88). He encourages us to open up to the other in a dynamism of charity which makes us tend towards “universal fulfilment” (Par 95). In this context, the Holy Father touches upon the issue of migrants as he reminds the world that the right to live with dignity cannot be denied to anyone, and since rights have no borders, no one can remain excluded, regardless of where they are born (see Par 121).

The theme of migration is continued in the fourth chapter, ‘A heart open to the whole world’. He speaks of our Christian responsibility to welcome, support, protect and integrate those who flee from war, persecution, natural catastrophes, unscrupulous trafficking, and are ripped from their communities of origin (Par 37). He reminds those governing nations to create concrete opportunities for their people to live with dignity in their countries of origin and thus eliminate need for unnecessary migration.

politics that protects worK

In the fifth chapter, ‘A better kind of politics’, the Holy Father speaks of a better politics that protects work, an “essential dimension of social life”. The best strategy against poverty, the Pontiff explains, does not simply aim to contain or render indigents inoffensive, but to promote them in the perspective of solidarity and subsidiarity (see Par 187). Finding a solution to all that attacks fundamental human rights, such as social exclusion, the marketing of organs, tissues, weapons and drugs, sexual exploitation, slave labour, terrorism and organised crime ought to be the focus of a better politics that would build the world. Such better kind of politics is one that definitively works towards eliminating human trafficking, a “source of shame for humanity”, and hunger, which is “criminal” because food is “an inalienable right” (Par 188-189).

The sixth chapter, ‘Dialogue and friendship in society’, proposes the concept of life as the “art of encounter” because “each of us can learn something from others. No one is useless and no one is expendable” (see Par 215).

In the seventh chapter, ‘Paths of renewed encounter’, the Pope underlines that peace is connected to truth, justice and mercy. Far from the desire for vengeance, it is “proactive” and aims at forming a society based on service to others and on the pursuit of reconciliation and mutual development (see Par 227-229). Thus, peace is an “art” that involves forgiveness. Forgiveness does not mean impunity, but rather, justice and remembrance, because to forgive does not mean to forget, but to renounce the destructive power of evil and the desire for revenge.

Part of the seventh chapter, then, focuses on war, “a constant threat”, that represents “the negation of all rights”, “a failure of politics and of humanity”, and “a stinging defeat before the forces of evil”. He reminds the world that the total elimination of nuclear arms is “a moral and humanitarian imperative”. With the money invested in weapons, the Pope suggests instead the establishment of a global fund for the elimination of hunger (see Par 255-262).

“Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity,” the Pope writes, “and God himself pledges to guarantee this” (Par 263-269). Therefore, death penalty is inadmissible and must be abolished worldwide. He further emphasises the necessity to respect “the sacredness of life” (Par 283) where today “some parts of our human family, it appears, can be readily sacrificed”, such as the unborn, the poor, the disabled and the elderly (Par 18).

In the eighth and final chapter, the Pontiff focuses on ‘Religions at the service of fraternity in our world’. Terrorism is not due to religion but to erroneous interpretations of religious texts, he reasons. “Policies linked to hunger, poverty, injustice, oppression” create opportune playing fields for terrorism to grow (Par 282-283). Lastly, the Pontiff returns to the appeal that, in the name of human fraternity, dialogue be adopted as the way, common cooperation as conduct, and mutual knowledge as method and standard (see Par 285).