Vatican official: Embracing poverty will help religious find justice

Published: 2006-10-13

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The impact of religious orders on the search for justice and peace will increase to the extent that they live lives marked by simplicity and sharing the lot of the poor, said the top-ranking woman at the Vatican. Salesian Sister Enrica Rosanna, undersecretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, spoke at the opening of an Oct. 12-13 Vatican seminar on religious orders and Catholic social teaching. The "biggest challenge" facing religious orders in their efforts to promote justice, peace and the preservation of the environment "is to live in poverty with simplicity and without waste," she said. In the modern world, Sister Rosanna told participants, there is a "concentration of power and of riches in the hands of a few and, therefore, the common good really is only the good of some." In the face of so much poverty, she said, religious become concrete witnesses to the values of the kingdom of God by living simple and sober lives in solidarity with the poor, sharing their homes, their food, their time, talents and faith.

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