Pope Francis: do not discard the elderly

March 04, 2015

Pope Francis devoted his March 4 general audience to the elderly and obligations toward them.

“Where the elderly are not honored, there is no future for the young,” he said.

Citing Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis added that “the quality of a society, I mean of a civilization, is also judged by how it treats elderly people and by the place it gives them in community life.”

“It’s is a mortal sin to discard our elderly,” Pope Francis continued, as he decried the view that the elderly are a burden rather than a source of wisdom. “The elderly are not aliens, we are them, in a short or in a long while; we are inevitably them, even although we choose not to think about it.”

 

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Further information:

• Pope: a society that discards the elderly carries within a deadly virus (Vatican Radio)