ROME — The chief of the Vatican’s department of “Integral Human Development” said Wednesday that the coronavirus epidemic has served to showcase the serious socio-economic inequalities in the modern world.
“The incidence of the virus, like any emergency situation, highlights the serious inequalities that characterize our socio-economic systems,” said Cardinal Peter Turkson in a written statement Wednesday.
“They are inequalities in economic resources, in the use of health services, as well as in qualified personnel and scientific research,” the cardinal said, without clarifying further. “Faced with this range of inequalities, the human family is challenged to really feel and live as an interconnected and interdependent family.”
“The incidence of Coronavirus has demonstrated this global relevance, having initially hit only one country and then spread to every part of the globe,” he declared.
The present crisis furnishes “a good time to understand the value of brotherhood, of being linked to each other in an indissoluble way,” Turkson said.
“The value of solidarity also needs to be embodied,” he added. “We can think of the neighbor, the office colleague, the school friend, but above all the doctors and nurses who risk contamination and infection to save the infected. These operators live and show us the meaning of the mystery of Easter: donation and service.”
In a curiously worded paragraph, the cardinal also suggested that the lack of availability of the Eucharist — since all Catholic Masses in Italy have been canceled until April 3 — gives the faithful a chance to get down to the essentials of the Christian spiritual life.
“At the beginning of this Lenten journey, for many lacking some community liturgical signs such as the celebration of the Eucharist, we are called to an even more deeply rooted path on what sustains the spiritual life: prayer, fasting and charity,” he said.
The cardinal further suggested that Catholics not view the lack of Masses as a “privation.”
“If we cannot meet in our assemblies to live our faith together, as we usually do, God offers us the opportunity to enrich ourselves, to discover new paradigms, and to find again the personal relationship with Him,” he said.
“Jesus reminds us: ‘But you, when you pray, enter your room and, closed the door, pray to your Father in secret; and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you,’” the cardinal stated.
“Prayer is our strength, prayer is our resource. Here then is the favorable moment to rediscover the fatherhood of God and our being children,” he said.
For his part, Pope Francis recently wrote that “no Christian community is built up which does not grow from and hinge on the celebration of the most holy Eucharist.”