John Falzon, CEO for the National Council of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Australia presented the Keynote Address entitled “Change will come from below” to the Seventh Pacific and Asian Cooperation (Panasco) Conference. “listen to our sisters and brothers who are downtrodden and poor”. Click the Read More link.

“I am going to reflect with you on the kind of partnership that lies at the heart of the story of the St Vincent de Paul Society. It is based on the simplest of questions and simplest of answers. The question is this: How did God speak to Frederic Ozanam and his young companions?”

“And the answer is one that you already know: God spoke to these relatively privileged young men through the poor. My message is very simple, therefore. Above everything else, we must listen to our sisters and brothers who are downtrodden and poor. We must learn from our sisters and brothers who are downtrodden and poor.”

The Conference in Goa, India, was hosted by the Indian National Council of the St Vincent de Paul Society.

More details of the St Vincent de Paul Society’s Panasco-7 Conference at Goa can be found through the link SSVPGLOBAL .

Change will come from below

Keynote Address to the Seventh Pacific and Asian Cooperation (Panasco) Conference,

Goa, India 14th September, 2010

Dr John Falzon Chief Executive Officer St Vincent de Paul Society National Council of Australia

johnf@svdpnatcl.org.au

Thank you, my dear sisters and brothers, for extending the kind invitation to share some
ideas with you at this wonderful Asia-Pacific gathering.
I have been asked to speak about partnerships for progress.
When we hear this phrase we often think first of partnerships between NGOs, or between
NGOs and government or business.
I am not going to reflect on these partnerships with you today, even though they are useful
as means to an end. There is more than enough talk of this among the powerful of the world
whose voices are heard and usually heeded.
No. Today I am going to reflect with you on the kind of partnership that lies at the heart of
the story of the St Vincent de Paul Society. It is based on the simplest of questions and
simplest of answers.
The question is this: How did God speak to Frederic Ozanam and his young companions?
And the answer is one that you already know: God spoke to these relatively privileged
young men through the poor.
My message is very simple, therefore. Above everything else, we must listen to our sisters
and brothers who are downtrodden and poor. We must learn from our sisters and brothers
who are downtrodden and poor. We must stand on the side of our sisters and brothers who
are downtrodden and poor.
We know that this message is dismissed by the so-called wisdom of the wealthy,
industrialized global north as being too simplistic. There are some who go much further and
condemn this message as being downright dangerous or subversive.
They are partly right. It is very simple but I must voice my certainty to you that far too often
we allow complexity to be our excuse for inaction and so we divest ourselves of our real
social responsibility.
They are right too to say that this message is dangerous. It is dangerous to those of us who
believe it. It is dangerous to those of us who practice it. But most of all it is dangerous to
those who have a vested, unchristian interest in defending a cruel and unjust status quo.
They fear the conscientization of the poor. They fear that the poor will cease to accept their
poverty as a matter of fate. They fear that the poor will begin to question and critically
analyse the structural causes of their marginalisation.
You will remember the magnificent and saintly example of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San
Salvador. None of us can forget that his own life was radicalised by listening to, and learning
from, the poor. And none of us can forget that he paid the ultimate price for his
revolutionary love of the poor. He was hounded, and eventually killed, by the powers that
saw him as being a dangerous threat to an unjust status quo. I would like to share with you
one of his beautiful prophetic utterances:
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“Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the
epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes,
which have turned everything upside down.”
This, my sisters and brothers, is why I referred to our brother Oscar’s love as being
revolutionary. Revolution literally means turning everything upside down. This is precisely
what Christ’s Beatitudes challenge us to do, according to Romero. This is what Ozanam saw.
This is what we too are challenged to see. Far from being a call to violence or hate, the
Beatitudes are a call to love. But this is not a sentimental love or a patronising love. It is a
hard and disturbing love. It is hard and disturbing to hear the Word-made-flesh, the God
who pitched his tent among us, telling us:
Blessed are you who are poor. Woe to you who are rich.
Blessed are you who are hungry. Woe to you who are full.
Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, revile you.
Woe to you when all speak well of you.
This is a hard teaching. Over the centuries since these words were uttered we have done
triple somersaults to avoid their simple and direct message, their startling, revolutionary
challenge to turn everything upside down. The poor, the hungry, the excluded; these are the
people of the earth whose choices have been taken away by unjust structures and histories
of oppression. There is only one way forward, according to this teaching, and that is for
those who have the choices to take the side of these sisters and brothers; to listen and learn
from the poor. The key to improving the lives of the world’s destitute people lies in
educating them and listening to them. It is not enough, according to the logic of the
Beatitudes, for the powerful to try to impose solutions.
I will repeat this for I know how hard it is for us to hear it. We are called to engage in a
revolutionary practice of listening, a revolutionary practice of humility, a revolutionary
practice of obedience to the wishes and aspirations of the poor, the hungry, the excluded.
Obedience is an unfashionable word in the prosperous consumer societies of today’s world
where the key value is individualism and the key practice is to do whatever you want.
The word “obedience” comes, of course, from the Latin term for listening. I put it to you
that Frederic and his companions were obedient to God by listening to the excluded.
Humility means sharing the same ground as the people who are broken. Cesar Vallejo, the
Peruvian poet, described this brokenness poignantly:
“There are people so wretched, they don’t even have a body!”
These broken people are the Real Presence of Jesus, the wounded healer, the “liberator
wrapped in shackles” who bids us to come follow him by listening to them.
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This is what we are challenged to do. We are often tempted to think that the most
important partnerships are those we might make with powerful governments or powerful
businesses. These might be necessary from time to time as means to an end but the most
essential, the most non-negotiable, partnership we can engage in is a partnership with the
poor.
This is the most important partnership we can engage in; a partnership, a solidarity with, a
learning from, our marginalized sisters and brothers. I do not mean a patronizing action that
puts the poor in the position of grateful, deserving recipient. I mean a commitment to their
liberation, a joining in companionship on the journey to God’s kingdom of justice and
compassion.
As Arthur Rimbaud, the young Belgian poet who experienced so much poverty and exclusion
in his own life, put it:
“Only with burning patience shall we conquer the splendid city that will give light, justice and
dignity to all.”
This best thing also for prosperous nations to do is to listen to the nations of the developing
world, the majority world, as well as to the people within their own countries who are
condemned to live lives mirroring the conditions of the developing world.
As we speak, rather than being listened to, rather than being loved, the downtrodden in the
prosperous countries of the world are being trodden on even more, whether you look at the
Roma peoples in Europe or the refugees seeking asylum in Australia. We are not witnessing
an outpouring of compassion. We are not witnessing an outpouring of justice. The powerful
are anything but obedient to the poor. Rather, their futures are determined from above. We
witness this especially in regard to the colonised Indigenous Peoples of prosperous
countries. They are told from above what is good for them, how they must improve, without
any thought for their stories of dispossession and pain, or their dreams of justice, or the
power of their courageous love and undaunted hope.
The same, as you know, is true of the unequal power relations between the wealthy
countries and the Majority World.
It is encouraging to see the church often speaking up against these forms of dispossession.
The St Vincent de Paul Society in Australia, along with key bishops, has criticized the
treatment of refugees as well as the paternalistic control over Aboriginal Australians. Two
French bishops in charge of the pastoral care of the people known as Gypsies, Roma or
Travellers, Raymond Centene and Claude Schockert, published a statement at the end of
July this year warning against “the stigmatisation of Travellers who make ideal scapegoats,
when in fact they are the principal victims of the ills of our society.”
Another example of how we have failed to listen is in regard to the natural environment. Far
from being a fashionable, middle class, urban fad, real concern for the planet is a core issue
for the most vulnerable around the globe. If anyone is unsure about this just ask the people
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of Bangladesh or Kiribati! The quest for profits has supplanted the respect for nature that is
so central to the wisdom of the forgotten peoples of the majority world.
The world of today has most things upside down. Together we must work to turn them the
right way up. The richest 2 percent of adults in the world own more than half the world’s
wealth, according to a study released by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development
Economics Research.
The richest 1 percent of adults own 40 percent of global assets while the richest 10 percent
of adults own 85 percent of the world’s total assets.
In contrast, the assets of half of the world’s adult population account for barely 1 percent of
global wealth.
In addition to this, according to the International Labour Organisation we learn that women
do ? of the world’s work, receive 5% of the world’s income and own 1% of the world’s
assets.
The World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health two
years ago released its report entitled Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity through
Action on the Social Determinants of Health. According to its findings: “Social injustice is
killing people on a grand scale.”
Sir Michael Marmot, Commission Chair said: “Central to the Commission’s
recommendations is creating the conditions for people to be empowered, to have freedom
to lead flourishing lives. Nowhere is lack of empowerment more obvious than in the plight
of women in many parts of the world. Health suffers as a result.”
Similarly, Bishop Agnelo Gracias of Mumbai has recently echoed for us the prophetic words
of Frantz Fanon:
“What counts today, the question which is looming on the horizon, is a need for a
redistribution of wealth. Humanity must reply to this question, or be shaken to pieces by it.”
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ, we have a massive battle on our hands; a battle against
the causes of social and economic inequality and it is no surprise if we feel like we are
outnumbered and outflanked by the powerful structures that dominate our planet.
The truth is this: our sling is the sling of David as we fight the monstrous Goliath of global
inequality and injustice.
In fighting against inequality and injustice we do not wish to fight anyone. On the contrary,
we yearn to bring liberation to both the oppressed and the oppressor. As Paulo Freire
wrote:
“The oppressor cannot find in their power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or
themselves. Only the power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be
sufficiently strong to free both.”
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For us as Vincentians, we are urged by Frederic to consider the following wisdom:
“You must not be content with tiding the poor over the poverty crisis. You must study their
condition and the injustices which brought about such poverty, with the aim of long term
improvement.”
This is why we are urgently required to familiarise ourselves with the reasons for so much
unnecessary suffering and degradation across our world. We are in the world to change the
world.
When we speak about social justice we go to the heart of what the St Vincent de Paul
Society stands for. As we are bidden by the Book of Proverbs (31:8-9):
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, protect the rights of those who are
helpless. Speak out and pronounce a sentence of justice, defend the cause of the wretched
and the poor.”
We are called, as Vincentians, to feed, clothe, house and assist our brothers and sisters who
are forced onto the margins of society.
We are also called to ask why they are left out and pushed out.
As Frederic said:
“Charity is the oil being poured on the wounded traveller. But it is the role of justice to
prevent the attack.”
So how can we join with the poor in meaningful solidarity and companionship to prevent
the attack?
As Professor Ian Webster, a highly regarded physician who has had a long and generous
relationship with the Society, put it so well at one of our recent Congresses in Australia:
“Poverty… is an oppression from which we should aim to liberate our people.”
The God of the Bible is a God who liberates, a God who takes the side of the poor and
oppressed, a God who joins the poor in their struggle for dignity.
As Jesus proclaimed, when he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, in the synagogue in
Nazareth:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the
poor; release for captives, recovery of sight to the blind, liberation for the oppressed.”
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The Rule tells us that: “The Society helps the poor and disadvantaged speak for themselves.
When they cannot, the Society must speak on behalf of those who are ignored.”
My sisters and brothers, do we fulfil this requirement of the Rule? Do we create the space
and provide the resources and support so that marginalised people can speak for
themselves? Failing this, do we even speak up strongly enough on their behalf? Are we a
voice of the voiceless?
Or to put the question another way: are we obedient enough to the poor; do we listen
enough to the poor; do we learn enough from the poor, so as to be able to speak for them
and, more powerfully, create the opportunities for them to speak for themselves?
You are no doubt familiar with the wonderful 17th century story of Don Quixote by the
Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote seems sometimes to be an accurate caricature
of what we do when we dream like this of a more just and egalitarian world. He is depicted
as a deluded dreamer believing himself to be a knight running around, on Rocinante, his
skinny horse, trying to be chivalrous while everyone laughs at him. You will also remember
from this famous and beautiful story, however, that Don Quixote is not alone. He is, of
course, accompanied by the ever-faithful, and ever-practical, Sancho Panza.
The Indigenous people of Brazil have a wonderful saying that:
“When we dream alone it is only a dream but when we dream together it is the beginning of
reality.”
We need the idealism of a Don Quixote, the dreamer, as well as the pragmatism of a Sancho
Panza. This is the dreaming together, and taking action together, that will be the beginning
of a new reality in partnership with the marginalised and despised of the world. This will
ensure that we truly fight the Goliath of injustice and inequality, even if we only have the
humble sling of David at our disposal.
In the words of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet:
“Rise up with me against the organisation of misery.”
I would like to leave you with the powerful words that St Paul wrote, describing Abraham,
who believed, against all odds, in the promise that was made to him.
“Against all hope he believed in hope.”
May we make these words our own. And may we transform them into actions.
I believe that the most important stage in the history of humanity is beginning now. It is not
too late to turn the globalised polarization of wealth and misery into a globalization of
compassion, of social equality, of human solidarity, of holy tenderness.
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Together then let us listen to, and heed, the wisdom of Lilla Watson, an Australian
Aboriginal Activist, who wrote:
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your
liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”