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ARGENTINA | 25-07-2023 18:51

Pope Francis on national turmoil: 'The problem is us Argentines'

The Holy Father talked about the attitude of expecting problems to be easily solved and illustrated it with the Qatar World Cup. “We have a very beautiful country”, he said.

Every time Pope Francis talks about his country, the Argentine Republic, it quickly goes viral. Now, the Supreme Pontiff reflected on the crisis facing his country and claimed that “the problem is us” – that is, the Argentine people. 

At any rate, he said that “we have a very beautiful country.”

The religious leader talked about the country in a trailed fragment of the Popecast podcast, broadcast by the Vatican. In it, he assured that the Argentine people itself “many times does not have the strength to go on, to be consistent, to move on, and when something goes wrong we change and sometimes believe that with three steps it’s all over.”

However, the Supreme Pontiff claimed that despite that attitude of change and belief in easy solutions, “there is quite a road to follow”. 

Regardless of that, he defended Argentina after a question by a young woman taking part in the episode. “I understand you talk about the daily fight for a better country, but we have a very, very beautiful country,” Francis answered. 

Yet then he used the victory of the National Team in the Qatar World Cup to settle his position in terms of the Argentine people’s belief to fix things easily.

“Look at the last world cup, the matches versus the Netherlands and France. Against the Netherlands, in the first half, we were 2-0, beautiful. But what did the Argentines do? [They said] ‘we’ve won’, and in the end the won by a penalty shot,” he remembered. 

“With France, [we were] 3-1 [They said] ‘we’ve won’. But they still had to play the second half, and in the end they won by a penalty shot.”

 

‘We have to look at the end of the road’

In this vein, the Pope insisted “we believe that it ends because we get tired along the way and stop in the middle”, and he urged them to “keep going, we always have to look at the end of the road.”

To conclude, the pontiff told the story of two angels who sent a complaint to God because He had given all riches to Argentina.

“They said ‘You, holy father, are unfair, because you have given each of us one piece of wealth, the countryside, cows, mining or fishing. But you have given Argentines everything. Because Argentina is rich in fish, minerals.’ And they say the Lord answered: ‘I realised that, and to balance things out I gave them to the Argentine people’”, Francis concluded.

The Pope’s podcast with youths took place in light of the World Youth Day. 

“The Church is a Church when it is on a path. On the contrary, it is a religious sect locked in itself. Many times, small groups fight in the Church, one against the other. When a difference becomes a match, it kills unity… We are not all uniform in Church and that is its greatness”, he declared.

 

– TIMES/PERFIL

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