PRESS RELEASE
Friday June 4, 2015,
Santa Cruz de la Sierra - Bolivia
All journalists please disseminate and give coverage:
POPULAR MOVEMENTS, MEETING IN BOLIVIA, MEET POPE FRANCIS AND EVO MORALES 7-9 JULY 2015 - SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA
A little less than a year after their first successful meeting in Rome, the popular movements and Pope Francis will meet again on 9 July in Santa Cruz de la Sierra - guests of Evo Morales and the Plurinational State of Bolivia.
"Solidarity, understood in its deepest sense, is a way to make history and that is what the popular movements do."
Pope Francis at the Popular Movements Gathered in Rome, October 2014
From 7th to 9th of July, more than 1500 delegates from different Latin American popular movements and delegations from other continents, along with a significant number of bishops and pastoral workers - with the active collaboration of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP) - will participate in three days of meetings, reports, and debates.
They will share experiences, facts, ideas and proposals to address the problems affecting the poor of the earth from their own condition as peasants and indigenous people, residents of squatter settlements and families struggling for homes, precarious or popular economy workers, and those excluded from the earth. They are not resigned to doing nothing, but are organized and fighting for a humane alternative to the globalization of exclusion.
Therefore the central theme – as in the previous meeting – remains land, housing and work with a broader view about of what is happening to the earth and the various conflicts affecting peace and sovereignty in the world.
The meeting ends on 9 July at 5:30 pm where all participants and the host President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the popular indigenous leader, Evo Morales, will discuss with Pope Francis about the importance of the process of change that has Popular Movements as the protagonist in the struggle for social justice.
At the end of the meeting, the Popular Movements will present to Pope Francis a document with the results of the work of the three days and the most urgent measures to be taken, which the Pope will take into account in his presentations before the Assembly of the United Nations in New York and other international forums.
Wishing to build upon the positive experience of the 1st Meeting on a broader scale, during the Holy Father's presence in Latin America, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace wants to promote mutual understanding and collaboration of grassroots organizations and the local churches of the countries of the Americas. Encouraging the presence of people and organizations from varied perspectives, origins and mentalities, we are called to promote a real culture of dialogue, which encounter can do. In the coming together of peoples, individuality is maintained despite all differences (cf. Evangelii Gaudium n. 236).
The press conference to present the World Meeting of Popular Movements 2015 will take place at 11 am on 6 July in Santa Cruz de la Sierra - Bolivia. Participants: Cardinal Peter Turkson of the PCJP, Juan Grabois of CTEP Argentina, Joao Pedro Stedile of the MST Brazil, Xaro Castelló World Movement of Christian Workers, Jokin Aprputham Coordination of Popular Settlements Federation India, Alfredo Rada COB Bolivia.
All media are invited.
"No homeless family, no landless farmers, no workers without any rights, no human being without dignity"
Pope Francis
Further information: Press Office EMMP 20015
Other contacts:
Gabriela Bonus - + 54 911 32669917 Argentina
Elvira Corona - +39 3471895632 Argentina/Italia
Rita Zanoto - +556199700420 Brasil
Daniela Otero – + 5912 706 11 781 Bolivia
EMMP 2015
www.movimientospopulares.org
Facebook
Twitter