Pope Francis: education, sharing, witness help us respond to vocation to work

January 18, 2016

Work is a vocation rooted in God’s call to till and keep the garden, Pope Francis told members of the Christian Workers Movement who had gathered in Paul VI Audience Hall on January 16.

To respond well to the vocation, he continued, it is helpful to recall the importance of education, sharing, and witness.

“It is necessary to form people for ‘a new humanism of work’ in which man, and not profit, is at the center; in which the economy serves man, and does not simply make use of him,” he said.

The Pope decried corruption and lamented high rates of youth unemployment: robbing the young of the dignity of work, he said, in time can lead to psychological disorders and suicide.

“Human justice requires that everyone have access to work,” he added. “High-sounding words will not avail. What is needed is rather to communicate hope, to comfort with presence, to sustain with concrete help.”

 

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Further information:

• Udienza al Movimento Cristiano Lavoratori, 16.01.2016 (Holy See Press Office)
• Pope Francis receives Christian Workers Movement (Vatican Radio)
• Audience to Members of the Christian Workers' Movement 2016.01.16 (YouTube Vatican)