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FOR the Poor on Prince Edward Island

1/29/2014

1 Comment

 
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What specific action can I take to demonstrate that I am for the poor?

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St. Francis renouncing worldly wealth

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During his visit to the hilltop town of Assisi in October, 2013, Pope Francis, stated his vision for the Catholic Church and highlighted it with four main goals, the first of which is “A Church that is poor and for the poor.”  On Prince Edward Island, some of the issues associated with this goal are food insecurity, a livable income for all, and poverty eradication. 

At our January fraternity meeting, we presented this first goal and fraternity members agreed to accept this challenge for the February meeting: Since we are Church, what specific action can I take this month to demonstrate that, as a Franciscan, I am for the poor?  Our fraternity members have agreed to bring their written, anonymous responses to the February 9 meeting and place them in a box.  At this meeting, we will read aloud several of the responses and later publish all of them in our newsletter. We will share them with you here too.

We used this text for our January meeting (excerpts taken from The Guardian, October 5, 2013) :

While in Assisi, Pope Francis had lunch with a group of poor at a soup kitchen after demanding that the faithful “strip” themselves of their worldly attachment to wealth, which he said is killing the Church and its souls.  He delivered that exhortation during the most evocative stop of the day, in the simple room where St. Francis stripped off his clothes, renounced his wealth and vowed to live a life of poverty.

Since becoming pope in March, Francis has made it clear that one of his principal objectives is a church that is humble, looks out for the poorest and brings them hope.  The “slum pope”, as he is known because of his work in Argentina’s shanty-towns, recently denounced the idolatry of money and encouraged those without the “dignity” of work.

From the St. Francis of Assisi JPIC Comm.
(Mike C., Doug H., Louise L., Marion M.)
1 Comment
john lipton link
1/29/2014 11:48:08 am

At our Saturday's Meeting, the following issues in our province were discussed.
1- Residence du Havre, which was mostly destroyed by fire in L’Iles-Verte Thursday, did not have a sprinkler system to cover the entire facilitIn the last several years, Nova Scotia has adopted national fire code and building standards that require sprinkler systems to be installed in buildings where residents require care (like nursing homes and residential care facilities), Pothier said.
“As of 2010, any care facility that has been constructed since then would be required to have a sprinkler system,” he said.
About 300 care facilities exist across the province, including nursing homes, hospitals, residential care facilities and some group homes, he said.

2- A growing provincial debt, poor internal financial controls and missing information required to verify entitlements to pensioners, were among issues identified in Auditor General Jacques Lapointe's final report to the House of Assembly, released today, Jan. 23.    
The net debt of the province at the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year stood at $13.9 billion, a 5.3 per cent increase over the previous year -s representing a $617 increase in per capita debt, to $14,832 for every Nova Scotian.    5
3- Our umemployment rate is 9.2
4- Over 3,000 abortions were performed in our province in the year 2012?
5- More than one in six children in Nova Scotia live in poverty, according to the latest report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, making it the fifth highest child poverty rate in Canada.The most recent numbers show 17.3 per cent of children in the province still live below the poverty line. The group estimates that’s about 29,000 children or approximately the population of Sydney Mines, Yarmouth, Wolfville and Pictou combined. She also said many families with children are not able to rise out of poverty even if a parent finds full-time work. According to the report, 40 per cent of poor children in Nova Scotia lived with at least one full-time worker in 2011.

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