Every time I am confronted by these issues, I cannot get the words of Jesus out of my mind. The poor you will always have with you.Those words are not some fatalistic doctrine suggesting that there is nothing we can do, they are words that encourage generosity, but they also encourage us to face reality. Poverty is persistent, deeply embedded in human experience and profoundly resistant to all our endeavours to shift it. It is an evil, inhuman experience demanding that every generation faces it, fights it and seeks to overcome it.The full text is available
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