Ifda dossier 47, May/June 1985

ifda dossier 47 . mayljune 1985 they had this to say
POPE JOHN PAUL 11:
THE POOR SOUTH WILL JUDGE THE RICH NORTH
Addressing a gathering of some 150,000 assembled in Edmonton
during his visit to Canada last September, Pope John Paul I1
said that "development is the new name for peace".
He focused his sermon on Christ's words in the Gospel of
Saint Matthew: "As you did it to one of the least of these
my brethren, you did it to me".
He said that Christ was speaking of what today is known as
the North-South confrontation: "The South becoming always
poorer and the North becoming always richer". Just as
Christ will judge men, he said "the poor South will judge
the rich North".
The South "will judge those people who take these goods away
from them, amassing to themselves the imperialistic monopo1.y
of economic and political supremacy at the expense of
others .
The Pope said that the North-South contrast represented a
greater threat to peace than the nuclear standoff between
the superpowers. He called it "the whole threat of injus-
tice, the threat coming from the rigid structures of those
systems ... which do not open themselves so as to permit
themselves to go out toward man".
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