“A complaint and an anguished cry rise from the four cardinal points of Colombia. Life is threatened, devalued, wounded. Life is destroyed and massacred. With deep sorrow, we repudiate all forms of attacks against the lives of men and women in rural and urban areas of Colombia. In addition to the Covid-19 pandemic, our families are victims of a multiform anti-culture of death, which is threatening, violent, murderous, and destructive”.

In a pastoral letter entitled “Social enmity destroys life”, the Archbishop of Bogotá, Mgr. Luis José Rueda Aparicio once again expressed his repudiation for the attacks against the lives of men and women that continue to occur across the country., reported Fides News Agency. He then invokes “the Lord of Peace to free us from absurd social enmity and terrible belligerence” and urges us to take care of the social life of rural, urban, Afro-descendant, and indigenous communities, and to have the life of students, workers, displaced persons and migrants at heart.

“The social disease of hatred is contagious and destroys life”, reiterates the Archbishop of Bogotà, who urges: “Let us open our eyes to realize that social disease corrodes life because it produces economy with hate, science, art and religion with hate, ecology with hate, politics with hate”.

Faced with this gloomy panorama, Mgr. Rueda Aparicio recalls: “This is the time for healing, it is the time to return to God. Social healing requires women and men who work without being discouraged for an economy that is at the service of all, a science that seeks truth, a policy committed to the common good, a religious instrument of reconciliation and peace. Let’s build together a project of life in fraternity”. Finally, he reminds us that “we still have time to return to love life, every life”, therefore “let’s get out of indifference, let’s overcome pessimism, let’s start a new journey”. “Only social friendship can overcome hatred – he concludes -, it gives way to forgiveness, dialogue, welcome, amazement for creation, mutual care and coexistence in love”.

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