Description:

The year 2020 has been a challenge for our nation. It has been a year like no other. Yet, its challenges call for Franciscan values. This is a Franciscan moment.

Our mission at Franciscan Action Network is to promote and advocate for Franciscan values in American public life and politics. Guided by the Gospels and the examples of St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi, our work is to engage the issues of our nation with Franciscan hearts. In this year of 2020, Franciscan Action Network has created three videos calling on Americans to be inspired by Franciscan values as they vote. Entitled 2020: A Franciscan Moment, each of these videos are impassioned pleas for voters to bring Franciscan compassion into the voting booth.

 

Care for Creation:

The world is not ours, it belongs to God. We are tasked only to tend and care for this earth that God has created. Yet, we are failing the Creator in that task. We must recognize that we are in relationship with Creation. Climate change and environmental corruption are our responsibility to address. We must have compassion for the wounded earth. We must remember our responsibility to care for Creation when we vote.

 

Compassion:

Right now, the people of the United States are failing a basic moral test. Separating children from their parents at the border is cruelty, plain and simple. We believe we are all made in the image of God, so how is it that we feel comfortable treating people as if they aren’t people? How can we not be outraged? We have it in us to be so much better than we are now.

Morality in Government:

Here in the United States, we have the ability and the responsibility to choose who speaks for us. We are blessed with an incredibly diverse people and we must rise above what divides us and come together for the good of all citizens. We need moral leaders who are truly servants and will lead with virtue, compassion, integrity, and honesty.

Resources:

We are inspired in these videos by the spiritual witness of Pope Francis. His encyclicals and apostolic exhortations — Laudato Si’, Evangelii Gaudium, Gaudete et Exsultate, and the recently released Fratelli Tutti, are all so very Franciscan. Consciences formed in reading these words from His Holiness speak to the compassion so much needed in our public life today.

In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis teaches that our patron, St. Francis of Asissi “shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.” Acknowledging this instruction, we invite you to watch and share these brief videos which speak to our concerns on three relevant issues: Morality in Government, Care for Creation, and Compassion at our Border.

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