Pontiff Calls on Catholics to Aid Homeless

Pope John Paul II urged Roman Catholic laymen, officials and churches Tuesday to help alleviate the “immense needs” of the 1 billion people around the world who live without decent housing.

The papal appeal came as preface to a Vatican study concluding that homelessness is a structural problem of poverty and exploitation that afflicts one-fifth of mankind. About 900 million people live in substandard housing and “100 million quite literally do not have a roof over their heads,” said the study prepared by the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace.

To confront this “critical social situation,” the commission called for the world’s churches to materially support the homeless with building programs, to offer education in family and community development and to work together with public and private institutions attacking the problem.

“This situation is not simply a fact to which those with responsibilities in the field and, indeed, all persons are called to react,” said the commission. “Rather, from an ethical point of view, it is a scandal and one more indication of the unjust distribution of goods originally destined for the use of all.”

Aggravated by Urbanization

Rapid urbanization in virtually every country since World War II has aggravated the crisis, the study noted. In 1950, according to the commission’s figures, 29% of the world’s people lived in cities. In 1980, it was 40%. By century’s end, more than half the world’s population will be urban.

Rural housing is often dilapidated, and in the world’s mushrooming mega-cities, “large numbers of people are born, live and die in the open air,” the commission said, reporting that in Latin America “an estimated 20 million children sleep in the street.”

Homelessness is the product of a “structural crisis” underlain by poverty, the commission said in its report, timed to coincide with conclusion of the U.N. International Year of Shelter for the Homeless.

In his preface to the study, John Paul noted that the church’s own efforts for the homeless are both necessary and encouraging. But he concluded grimly, “There is no doubt that they still represent very little when compared with the immense needs of those millions who are presently without a roof over their head or do not have decent housing.”