Pope Francis gave a Laudato si’ Ted Talk – watch and listen!

Pope Francis: Overcome our techno-economic systems with solidarity!

He said, “Only by educating people to a true solidarity will we be able to overcome the ‘culture of waste,’ which doesn’t concern only food and goods but, first and foremost, the people who are cast aside by our techno-economic systems which, without even realizing it, are now putting products at their core, instead of people.” What he touched on was basically Laudato si’ and Evangelii Gaudium in Ted Talk form.

“When there is an ‘us,’ there begins a revolution,” the Pope said in his videotaped Ted Talk first shown on Ted on Tuesday evening this week.

Solidarity and encountering the Other are key in the message, as well as care for our common home. The Holy Father’s words were sobering and, perhaps to some, convicting:

How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion. How wonderful would it be, while we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us. How wonderful would it be if solidarity, this beautiful and, at times, inconvenient word, were not simply reduced to social work, and became, instead, the default attitude in political, economic and scientific choices, as well as in the relationships among individuals, peoples and countries.

Remember our discussion on Pope Francis’s Laudato si’ and its call to go beyond capitalism here. Enjoy the Ted Talk: