Linda Plitt Donaldson

• He met with prisoners and called them brothers.
• He met with undocumented immigrants and referred to himself as a son of immigrants.
• He offered compassion to families who lost their loved ones on Sept. 11.
• He reminded people who were homeless that Jesus came into the world as part of a homeless family, and added that there is “no social or moral justification …for lack of housing.”
• He recognized the struggles of families and offered them encouragement.
• He brought his joy and hope to children in Harlem.
• He cautioned us against exclusion, reminding us that “God wants all his children to take part in the feast of the Gospel… to give the impression that it cannot take place in those who are not “part of our group,” who are not “like us,” is a dangerous temptation.
• He addressed policymakers, advocating for peace, promoting the common good, and caring for the poor and the environment.

Pope Francis has shown through word and deed that he is a man of peace, a man of poverty, and a man of justice. He is unafraid to walk in solidarity with the least among us and to speak truth to power. He would have made a wonderful social worker, and certainly serves as an inspiration for our field.

– Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor at The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.

Linda Plitt Donaldson

This year, the census data show that despite reported economic growth, the poverty rate (14.8%) remains unchanged from 2013. Of the 46.7 million Americans who remain in poverty, 15 million are children (more than one in five). Poverty continues to have a disproportionate impact on people of color with African American and Latino poverty at 26.3% and 23.6% respectively. (It is important to remember that the federal poverty level for a family of four is $24,250, and very few of us know families of four who can live on $24,250 a year.).

Many of these families work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 10.5 million Americans are among the working poor. And most of the income from these families comes from low-wage work, e.g., cleaning, fast food, retail, home health care, and so on. It’s not just the wages of these jobs that keep working families in poverty. Many of these jobs offer no guarantee of minimum hours, expect 24/7 availability, have unpredictable schedules (e.g., less than a week’s notice about a shift), and have a growing reliance on ‘on call’ shifts. The scheduling issues associated with low-wage work make it very difficult for families with children to participate in the labor force because of the need to arrange regular child care. In addition, many low-wage workers have no paid sick days, and many of them work in conditions that actually make them sick. Workers are afraid of calling in sick or attending to child care emergencies for fear of being fired or having their hours reduced. Rashaun Rodgers works two jobs at $8/hour and struggles to support his family, including a 4-year old son.

His story is similar to the families profiled in the new book by authors Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. Edin and Shaefer introduce us to families who are poor, who have a deep desire to work, and who complete hundreds of job applications and accept low-wage jobs under terrible conditions. Yet they often lose these jobs because of the precarious conditions in which they live and the lack of understanding and accommodation by employers. Rae McCormick, a two-time cashier of the month, was fired because she had no means of getting to work after the family members with whom she shared a car drained her tank and did not tell her it was empty. Such stories told by Edin and Shaefer give evidence to the “economy of exclusion” noted by Pope Francis. The authors also document how the combined absence of a true safety net and of sufficient job opportunities has created the conditions for many families in America to be just surviving on $2 a day.

Since the beginning of modern Catholic social teaching with Rerum Novarum, Catholics have cared deeply about the dignity of work and the rights of workers. Pope John Paul II wrote an entire encyclical on work called Laborem Excercens, declaring work the center of the “social question” and noting that work is a “fundamental dimension of human existence.” Work is how we participate in God’s creation, in addition to providing for our families and giving us the means to participate in various spheres of life (family, community political, and economic). Pope Francis observes that work “expresses the dignity of being created in the image of God” and that “work is sacred.” He also acknowledges that dignity through work is “‘under threat by a cult of money which leaves many people without work.” Maximizing profit contributes to the unpredictable schedules and anemic benefits tied to low wage work.

The Community Advocates Public Policy Institute offers some examples of policy solutions that bring meaningful work opportunities to people who are poor. People who are poor want to work. They are hard workers. They need opportunities to work in jobs with wages where they can support their families. They need opportunities to work in jobs that offer predictable schedules, predictable hours, and health benefits. They need work that reflects their dignity.

– Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor at The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.

Linda Plitt Donaldson

In Sollicitudo rei Socialis Pope John Paul II used the example of the “nonviolent demonstrations [of the poor] to present their needs and rights to oftentimes corrupt and inefficient authorities” as a “positive sign …[of a] growing … solidarity.” And now Pope Francis is putting hope in the power of community organizing to restore dignity to the poor and to care for our common home.

In 1970, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops passed a resolution to start the Campaign for Human Development to address the structural causes of poverty by supporting the self-help efforts of communities to fight for and defend their right to live and flourish in a manner consistent with their dignity. For 45 years CCHD has been standing in solidarity with low-income communities in their efforts to demand justice and create economic opportunities that offer living-wage jobs.

The PICO National Network, founded by Jesuit priest Rev. John Bauman in 1972, has organized a #TellthePope campaign to highlight for the Pope the profound economic and racial challenges being experienced by families and communities in the United States. Through their Year of Encounter campaign, PICO is challenging communities to engage in “radical encounters of inclusion and to organize for workers’ rights.” At the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, they hope to convey the message to Pope Francis that poverty and racism are critical issues in the United States that ravage families and perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

Social workers have long been involved in organizing. They have organized and fought for the rights of children, women, workers, people of color, and people who are poor. The profession includes social justice giants such as Dorothy Height, Whitney Young, and Ron Dellums and lesser-known organizing heroes such as Diana Ming Chan and Antonia Pantoja.

Social workers continue to be engaged in organizing for social justice on a range of issues. For example, Elizabeth Alex is the lead organizer for Casa de Maryland, fighting for the rights of immigrants. Hannah Kane is organizing for the rights of workers with the DC Employment Justice Center. Adam Schneider is fighting for the rights of people who are homeless with Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore.

The social work profession is largely known for the clinical and direct services it provides to vulnerable and marginalized populations. Yet, the profession also has a legacy of community organizing and social reform that enables it to address both immediate needs and structural causes of poverty and human suffering. Catholics refer to that as walking with two feet of love in action. This is what Pope Francis is calling all of us to do, and the social work profession walks tall and proud with him in our shared vision of justice, mercy, and compassion in the world.

– Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor at The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.

Linda Plitt Donaldson

My 22 years of deep experience with Catholic sisters solidified in me that they are among the most credible and authentic witnesses to the power of God’s love in the world. Pope Francis’s message and way of being in the world reflects many of the same principles that I experienced in Catholic sisters, i.e., the primacy of encounter with people who are poor and marginalized, joyful hope in living the gospel, and fearlessness in speaking truth to power.

At the recent LCWR assembly, Rev. Stephen Bevans, S.V.D., offered a keynote address identifying some thirsts of the world for which there is universal longing.

• In a world with many corrupt and dysfunctional political systems, unethical and exploitive business practices, and widely disseminated mistruths and misconceptions, we long for the water of integrity.
• In a world filled with ceaseless human suffering, poverty, and war, we long for the wine of hope.
• In a world of racism, discrimination, exploitation, and oppression, we long for the nectar of justice.
• In a world that sometimes feels full of despair and hopelessness, we long for the elixir of beauty. Father Bevans quotes Mary Lou Kownacki, O.S.B., who wrote, “beauty uncovers the lie of violence, despair, and lack of hope and helps us imagine a world beyond our present reality.

Father Bevans claims that these thirsts are gifts of the Holy Spirit who stirs them within us so we are moved to act in the world with integrity, hope, justice, and beauty. Catholic sisters have been witnesses to this way of life for centuries; Pope Francis is a witness to this way of life for the world now. Let us join with him and our Catholic sisters to meet the thirsts of the world and thereby start to slake our own thirst.

– Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor at The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.

Linda Plitt Donaldson

Pope Francis reminds us that caring for creation is not only about caring for the planet; it also includes caring for humanity, especially the poor. In this encyclical, Pope Francis repeatedly states that “everything is connected,” and throughout he underscores the “intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet.” He speaks explicitly about the impact of pollution and dangerous waste producing “a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, [that] cause millions of premature deaths.” He addresses the warming effects that compromise “their means of subsistence [which] are largely dependent on natural reserves and economic systemic services such as agriculture, fishing, and forestry.” He adds that the suffering of the poor is compounded because they have no financial resources to help them adapt to the effects of climate change.

He draws on the ample scientific evidence that climate change risk is severely acute in developing countries and has caused destruction, displacement, and forced migration of people in many poor communities. The report by the 2015 UCL-Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change warns that “the effects of climate change threaten to undermine the last half-century of gains in development and global health.” Pope Francis notes the differences between the global north and the global south, and takes to task multinational corporations who “do [in developing countries] what they would never do in . . . the so-called first world . . . leav[ing] behind great human and environmental liabilities such as unemployment, abandoned towns, the depletion of natural reserves, deforestation, the impoverishment of agriculture and local stock breeding, open pits, riven hills, polluted rivers and a handful of social [services] which are no longer sustainable.”

Climate change is also impacting communities in the United States, and there are businesses that engage in practices that exploit low-income communities for their own profits. Readers may remember the film Erin Brockovich as one Hollywood depiction of the environmental impact of corporate practices that undermined the health of low-income residents. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has funded several community organizing projects to address environmental justice. The Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance is one example of a CCHD-funded effort and is highlighted in John Hogan’s wonderful book Credible Signs of Christ Alive.

In paraphrasing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Pope Francis asks us to “replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, [and] wastefulness with a spirit of sharing.” Pope Francis also realizes that such changes of behavior and attitude will take a conversion of hearts, so he has declared Sept. 1 as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. In addition to a conversion of hearts, Pope Francis recognizes that we need community organizing, particularly grassroots movements, to address the structural factors that feed the “mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for the social exclusion or the destruction of nature.”  At the World Meeting of Popular Movements in July, Pope Francis encouraged people who are poor to organize for social change. In offering gratitude and hope, he stated: “You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, are doing, a lot. . . . the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to organize… You are the sowers of change.” Social workers have a long history of community organizing. Let’s join with our brothers and sisters in organizing to care for God’s creation — our planet and all of humanity — particularly our neighbors near and far who are poor, vulnerable, and excluded.

—    Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor in The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.

Linda Plitt Donaldson

This explains much of the resonance of Pope Francis with social workers. People who are called to social work often have eyes, ears, and hearts that are already open, to some degree, to people who are poor, marginalized, and suffering. And, if social workers allow themselves to be vulnerable in these encounters (and not to hide behind a particular expertise or position of privilege), their hearts can be further broadened, and they can be transformed by these experiences.

Pope Francis speaks about the mutuality in our relationship with people who are poor. “In a very real way, the poor are our teachers. They show us that people’s value is not measured by their possession or how much money they have in the bank.”

“In their difficulties, [the poor] know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. . . . We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voices to their causes. . . .” (Evangelii Gaudium, 198).  Social work students will attest that the best teachers in their programs were the people they served in their field placements.

If we open ourselves to be transformed by these encounters, we can move to a place of true solidarity, where we feel in our hearts that our brokenness is bound with the brokenness of those we encounter. And we may gain the courage to take the challenge that Pope Francis and the gospel so plainly set before us — that is, “working to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and to promote the integral development of the poor” (EG, 188). Then we can honestly examine, for ourselves and for our country, the richest country in the world:

·         What are we doing to address the structural causes of poverty for the 45 million people and 20% of children who live in poverty, and the additional 14.7 million people who live in near poverty or between 100 and 125% of the federal poverty level.

·         What are we doing about the growing income inequality and stagnant wages that keep families mired in poverty? Today, 1.7 million more children live in low-income working families than during the Great Recession.

·         What are we doing about the racism in society where families of color disproportionately live in poverty; where black children are four times more likely than white children to live in poverty; where people of color are over-represented in our prison system; and where communities of color experience years of neglect, disinvestment, oppression, and cycles of hopelessness that can create conditions for violence (and peace), as exemplified by the social unrest in Baltimore only two months ago?

·         What are we doing about the cost of housing that is causing a larger share of American families to pay more than half of their paycheck on rent and utilities, and that is making it more difficult for low-income families and people who are homeless to find a place to live?

These are just some of the structural causes of human suffering (poverty, inequality, stagnant wages, racism, housing costs) that make manifest some of the daily struggles social workers encounter here in the United States, such as homelessness, addiction, depression, child abuse and neglect, and violence. Pope Francis invites us to touch these wounds so that we may be transformed by them and strengthened to stand with our brothers and sisters who are poor, to seek structural change, and to cultivate “habits of solidarity” that ultimately “restore to the poor what belongs to them” (EG, 189).

—    Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor in The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.

Linda Plitt Donaldson

The Society of Jesus — or the Jesuit order, in which Pope Francis was initially formed as a priest — includes a number of transformative experiences that offer a spiritual and concrete experience of walking with Jesus that can inform, free, and embolden one’s efforts to help build God’s kingdom on earth. Among these are the Spiritual Exercises, which are offered in various formats to lay and religious women and men in a variety of formats (eight days, 30 days, eight months) with the help of a guide or spiritual director. In addition to participating in the spiritual exercises as part of his formation, Pope Francis has directed these exercises for other Jesuits and clergy desiring to grow closer to Jesus.

Walking with Jesus through the Spiritual Exercises is a potentially transformative experience that profoundly deepens a desire “to know Jesus intimately, to be able to love Him more intensely, and so to follow Him more closely” (Spiritual Exercises, no. 113). Through the exercises, one is contemplating Jesus’s birth, life, ministry, suffering and death, and resurrection. Contemplation, in this sense, means placing yourself in the story with Jesus. Using your imagination and senses (sight, smell, touch, taste), you walk with Jesus through His life. But you are not just walking with Jesus; you are talking with Jesus, and you are listening. In this process, you are developing a greater intimacy with Him and cultivating an ability to hear His voice in your heart, to discern God’s voice in your heart.

Cultivating this ability to hear God’s voice leads to an interior freedom to know and courageously respond to God’s call in your life. The role of a spiritual director is critical to this process because so many things get in the way of our ability to hear and respond to God’s desire for us. St. Ignatius referred to these as disordered attachments that push God from the center of our lives and become the source of our identity. Examples of disordered attachments include a desire for power, wealth, and status. When money, power, and position become the source of our identity, we forget that the truth of our identity is that we are God’s beloved. Prayer, a good spiritual director, and a supportive faith community can help us discern God’s call so we may respond generously and fearlessly to it.

Pope Francis is applying the gifts he has been given by grace that have been cultivated in his Jesuit training, and further refined through his life experience to his papacy. He is responding generously, authentically, and courageously to God’s call. He is walking with Jesus. If you walk with Jesus, expect Him to show you His wounds, to invite you to touch them, to have your heart broken by them. Pope Francis is showing the world the wounds of Christ — that is, the conditions of people who are poor, suffering, exploited, marginalized, and oppressed. He is standing with them. He is inviting us to join him, to walk with him and Jesus to “bring good news to the poor. . . . to proclaim liberty to captives . . .  to let the oppressed go free” (Luke, 4:18). Are you ready to join him?

—   Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor in The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.

Linda Plitt Donaldson

The election and subsequent spiritual leadership of Pope Francis has inspired hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Nearing 20 million followers as of April 2015, he is the second most followed world leader on Twitter and is considered the most influential world leader, as evidenced by nearly 10,000 and 8,000 average daily retweets of his Spanish and English postings, respectively.

For someone who has worked on issues of poverty and homelessness for at least 22 years, Pope Francis offers a deeply inspiring vision for the Church and for the world. Large percentages of Catholics and non-Catholics (including those with no religious affiliation) admire the Pope and his message for humanity. Many people have asked me to what I attribute Pope Francis’s popularity. For me, it is his authentic and radical commitment to living (and thereby teaching) the gospel values rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, a way of living reflected in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, whom Pope Francis described as “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation,” qualities that led Pope Francis to select the name Francis.

Pope Francis is focusing the world’s attention on the basics of living the Truth: the inherent dignity of all people, the urgency of transforming social conditions so all can thrive (common good), the importance of solidarity among all peoples (knowing deeply that our own well-being is bound to the well-being of others), the need for families and communities to be supported in a way that they can address their own needs (subsidiarity), and the moral obligation to ensure that people who are poor, vulnerable, and suffering are central to our concern, for that is the ultimate measure of a just society. Catholics will recognize these fundamental aspects of living the Truth as core principles of Catholic social teaching.

And social workers will see echoes of these principles in our professional Code of Ethics, whose core values are service, social justice, dignity of the human person, the importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence. Schools of social work located in Catholic universities are often considered the academy’s institutional expression of the Church’s dual mission of service and justice. Pope Francis is focusing the vision of the Church and the world on this mission, our responsibility to one another through service and justice, which makes manifest our deep and abiding love for God. In this blog, I am excited to anticipate his visit by amplifying many of the themes of social transformation the Pope is calling for.

– Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor at The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.