Vatican City, October 5: Pope Francis has called for a “better kind of politics,” a more “open world,” and paths of renewed encounter and dialogue in his latest social encyclical, a letter that he hopes will promote a “rebirth of a universal aspiration” toward “fraternity and social friendship.”
Titled Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), the eight-chapter, 45,000-word document — Francis’ longest encyclical yet — delineates many of today’s socio-economic ills before proposing an ideal world of fraternity where countries are able to be part of a “larger human family.”
The encyclical, which the Pope signed in Assisi on Saturday, was published today, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, and followed the Angelus and a morning press conference on a Sunday.
The Pope begins in his introduction by explaining that the words Fratelli Tutti are taken from the sixth of 28 admonitions, or rules, that St. Francis of Assisi gave his brother friars — words, Pope Francis writes, that offered them “a way of life marked by the flavor of the Gospel.”
But he focuses in particular on St. Francis’ 25th admonition — “Blessed is the brother who would love and fear his brother as much when he is far from him as he would when with him” — and re-interprets this as calling “for a love that transcends the barriers of geography and distance.”
Noting that “wherever he went,” St. Francis “sowed seeds of peace” and accompanied the “least of his brothers and sisters,” he writes that the 12th-century saint did not “wage a war of words aimed at imposing doctrines” but “simply spread the love of God.”
The Pope draws mostly on his previous documents and messages, the teaching of post-conciliar popes, and some references to St. Thomas Aquinas. And he also regularly cites the Document on Human Fraternity that he signed with Grand Imam of Al-Azhar university, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, in Abu Dhabi last year, saying the encyclical “takes up and develops some of the great themes raised in the Document.”
In a novelty for an encyclical, Francis says he also has incorporated “a number of letters, documents and considerations” received from “many individuals and groups throughout the world.”
In his introduction to Fratelli Tutti, the Pope says he does not intend the document to be a “complete teaching on fraternal love,” but rather help further “a new vision of fraternity and social friendship that will not remain at the level of words.” He also explains that the Covid-19 pandemic, which “unexpectedly erupted” as he was writing the encyclical, underlined the “fragmentation” and the “inability” of countries to work together.
Francis says he desires to contribute to the “rebirth of a universal aspiration to fraternity” and “brotherhood” between all men and women. “Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all,” the Pope writes.