Fraternity means rejecting isolation of self-interest, Pope says
September 12, 2025
» Continue to this story on Vatican Press Office
CWN Editor's Note: In a September 12 message to the World Meeting on Human Fraternity, Pope Leo XIV emphasized the rejection of violence, saying that “Cain’s violence cannot be tolerated as ‘normal.’”
The Pope said that the challenge of fraternity can be stated in the form of the question: “Brother, sister, where are you?” He continued:
Where are you in the “business” of wars that shatter the lives of young people forced to take up arms; target defenseless civilians, children, women and elderly people; devastate cities, the countryside and entire ecosystems, leaving only rubble and pain in their wake? Brother, sister, where are you among the migrants who are despised, imprisoned and rejected, among those who seek salvation and hope but find walls and indifference? Where are you, brother, sister, when the poor are blamed for their poverty, forgotten and discarded, in a world that values profit more than people? Brother, sister, where are you in a hyper-connected life where loneliness corrodes social bonds and makes us strangers even to ourselves?
“The answer cannot be silence,” the Holy Father said. He went on to say: “Recognizing that the other person is a brother or sister means freeing ourselves from the pretense of believing that we are isolated individuals or from the logic of forming relationships only out of self-interest.”
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