Pope asks leaders for austerity and transparency

Pope Francisco, in his first World Youth Day (WYD), speech in Panama invited those in leadership positions in the government and the private sector to “live with austerity and transparency”, the  claim from their “freedom, sensitivity and critical capacity of new generations to adults,.”

The Argentine pontiff also  called on them to lead a life e that demonstrates public service is ” synonymous with honesty and justice, an antonym of any form of corruption.”

The message resonates in Panama, marked by cases of mismanagement of public funds, with politicians seeing their election as a key to the treasury, taxpayer-funded world trips and a privileged lifestyle. When caught with their hands in the till they claim “political persecution”.

Before some 700 people in the Bolivar Palace, including politicians and representatives of society, Francisco insisted that young people demand a commitment, in which everyone has “the audacity to build a genuinely human policy, that puts the person in the center as the heart of everything, which drives to create a culture of greater transparency among  governments and  the private sector”

Later in front of the bishops of Central America, the Pope quoted the Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero (1917-1980), killed while officiating a mass. He referred to the homily pronounced by Romero on October 1, 1978, which refers to the role of the Church.

“Dear brothers, this is the glory of the Church: to carry in your heart all the kenosis of Christ, and for that you have to be humble and poor, and a haughty Church, a Church supported by the powers of the earth, a Church without Kenosis, a Church full of pride, a self-sufficient Church, is not the Church of the Kenosis of St. Paul “

[in Christian theology, kenosis is the emptying of one’s will to be more receptive to the will of God.]