VATICAN CITY. The “reconstruction” on the rubble of the pandemic must be based on an awareness: human vulnerability is not a condemnation, on the contrary, it can become the resource to “make us unite” and thus save and progress. However, it is necessary to defeat selfishness and insensitivity towards those who cannot make it, mutually supporting each other, as human beings living together in the common home. “If we rebuild authentic social ties and reverse the trend from individualism to us, we will come out even better.” In the essay “The strength of fragility” (Editori Laterza, in bookstores these days) Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and, on this side of the Tiber, president of the Elderly Care Commission, established by the Minister of Health, Roberto Hope, suggests the lesson to be learned after the planetary earthquake caused by Covid.
He notes the common denominator: «We are fragile beings. The people, the elderly, the children. But also institutions, governments. Even the richest countries. Despite the progress and the extraordinary results of science and technology, we are at the mercy of the absolute unexpected ». But what is the point of acknowledging this obvious truth? First of all, according to Paglia it was not so obvious before, because “we preferred to ignore it”. Or worse, she “looked like a shame.” Instead, weakness “may have its strength, that of encouraging us to take care of each other, reminding us that alone nobody can save”. Paglia quotes the French philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch, who “pointed out:” man is fundamentally vulnerable “only because” death can enter him through all the joints of his body building “. Which is to say: every living being is “born” vulnerable, since, from the first instant of life, he is exposed to the radical risk of “death”, which, of risk, is his most proper name ” . The high prelate then speaks of the American archaeologist Ralph Solecki: after having discovered in Iraq «the skeleton of a Neanderthal man who shows signs of serious disability, he believes that fragility is at the very heart of evolution. His exclusion from the group was already felt as unbearable since then: they took care of him ». This choice, “contrary to the usefulness of simply biological evolution, leads to a more careful reflection on fragility as a source of solidarity”.
The prelate thus highlights concrete urgencies, such as that of “reterritorializing welfare and reorganizing widespread assistance for all”. And the need for a new culture: help to those who suffer “must be felt as a categorical imperative”. Because a renewed well-being can only be achieved “with fraternity”, animated by a new energy that is born of “universal compassion and the alliance of the frail”.