“Human solidarity is one of the key challenges of our time. Differences must not divide us, rather they must help us to recognize the beauty and uniqueness of the other. Much of our modern society puts people against each other; raises the level of competitiveness; fosters insecurity and often puts commercial gain above the human person.”

They are the words of Fr Xavier Jeyaraj who heads the Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat in the General Curia in Rome.He was addressing the context in which Pope Francis will publish, on 4 October, a new encyclical on fraternity entitled Fratelli tutti.

“It is so disheartening to see many of the trends in our world today. You can see a battle going on like in the Two Standards meditation of St. Ignatius. A vast majority of people want to do well and dream of a just and peaceful world. They want to be gentle and empathetic to their brothers and sisters; but in the end, so many powerful forces fight against that: socio-political and economic forces that speak of peace while promoting arms and violence.

Our role as Jesuits and that of all those who work with us is to encourage those who are promoting a society based on true love, justice and hope. We want to foster faith, to foster love, to foster peace, to foster unity. Those can seem like utopian ideals when we are faced with much of the political discourse that is going on today. But they are actually not utopian. They are the vision of Jesus Christ, the vision of God for our world today. The Trinity is looking at us with love, seeing all our differences: colour, race, gender and caste and yearning to bring about greater human solidarity.”