Fratelli Tutti

“Life, for all its confrontations, is the art of encounter”. ^{204VINICIUS DE MORAES, Samba da Benção, from the recording Um encontro no Au bon Gourmet, Rio de Janeiro (2 August 1962).} I have frequently called for the growth of a culture of encounter capable of transcending our differences and divisions. This means working to create a many-faceted polyhedron whose different sides form a variegated unity, in which “the whole is greater than the part”. ^{205Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), 237: AAS 105 (2013), 1116.} The image of a polyhedron can represent a society where differences coexist, complementing, enriching and reciprocally illuminating one another, even amid disagreements and reservations. Each of us can learn something from others. No one is useless and no one is expendable. This also means finding ways to include those on the peripheries of life. For they have another way of looking at things; they see aspects of reality that are invisible to the centres of power where weighty decisions are made.