Visiting Central America in 1983, he also went to Haiti, where the influential Duvalier family reigned. While reading the speech in which the motto of the local Eucharistic Congress was repeated: “Something needs to change here”, the Holy Father noticed the reaction of the innumerable enthusiastic crowd of those present. And so, every time he was repeating this slogan, he did it more and more emphatically.
In Port-au-Prince there was a great manifestation of the population. Alarmed, Jean-Claude Duvalier asked the Pope to soften his tone in his farewell address. The Pope replied that in conscience he could not do this. “Because here” – he said – “something really needs to change! People suffer here. It can’t go on like this!” As political experts say, it was then that Haiti began its path towards democracy.
The clash with the reality of the Third World has greatly contributed to the reflection, both of the Pope himself and of the Church, on the global dimension that the “social question” has reached. And, thus also to the reflection on the need to establish new rules for the regulation of relations between peoples, in the perspective of the growing globalization of the world, which is increasingly dependent, but also, precisely for this reason, increasingly exposed to the risk of the spread of poverty and injustice.
With the consent of Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz – “Testimony”.
TBA marketing communication Publishing House. Warsaw 2007
