Philadelphia (AsiaNews) – In his address this afternoon in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, where the US Declaration of Independence was signed, Pope Francis focused on religious freedom, the world’s future and religion’s place in society, as well as on certain God-given “inalienable rights” for which “governments exist”, and which they have “to protect and defend”.
For the Holy Father, religious freedom implies the right for various religious traditions to serve society, ensuring the transcendent value of the individual. Likewise, the pontiff called for “dialogue” among communities, “pluralism” and working "for the common good".
Such traditions underpin “our irreducible freedom in the face of every claim to absolute power”. They are an antidote to the "technocratic paradigm" that tries to level out and homogenise every individuality and culture within a process of faceless globalisation.
This is happening “In a world where various forms of modern tyranny seek to suppress religious freedom, or try to reduce it to a subculture without right to a voice in the public square, or to use religion as a pretext for hatred and brutality”.
Our world is “subject to the globalization of the technocratic paradigm, which consciously aims at a one-dimensional uniformity and seeks to eliminate all differences and traditions in a superficial quest for unity.”
Putting his written text aside, the pope added, "If globalisation seeks to englobe everything and everybody, erasing every individuality and tradition, that is no good . . . If it respects every people and every individual, then such globalisation is good and makes us live in peace".
Francis is equally concerned that mass society and the relativism that accompany bad globalisation might undermine and wipe out the Catholic tradition of many of the Hispanics present at the gathering as well as other ethnic minorities that live in the United States.
“You should never be ashamed of your traditions,” he told them. “I repeat: do not be ashamed of what is part of you, your life blood."
Ultimately, he noted, “In this witness, which frequently encounters powerful resistance, you remind American democracy of the ideals for which it was founded, and that society is weakened whenever and wherever injustice prevails."