Benedict XVI condemns the traps of a consumer society
On October 7 at the Vatican, Benedict XVI received 9,500 faithful from the Emilia–Romagna region of Italy on a pilgrimage to Rome to mark the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the visit by John Paul II (1978-2005) to their region in 1986.
The pope declared that there was no lack of “challenges and problems for those who want to live in a manner consistent with their faith, endeavoring to combine it with the demands of daily life.” Families, he said, were threatened by crises. The fall in the numbers of priestly and religious vocations was worrying.
The Sovereign Pontiff went on to condemn the “many traps of a secularized consumer society, which tried to seduce an ever increasing number of people, leading them to undergo a progressive detachment from the values of Faith, in family, civilian and political life.”
These are challenges he said, which must be faced without losing one’s soul, “by looking with confidence at the many reasons for hope which, thanks be to God, are not lacking, by following the example “of the men and women interested by strong and sincere religious searching” and by “witnessing to the joy of being Christian.”
