Rome, Italy, Jan 26, 2021 / 16:53 pm
An Italian cardinal said Tuesday the country is seeing a surge of “new poor” due to the coronavirus pandemic, and warned that the situation is putting many at risk of becoming victims of usury.
“The fracture of the new forms of poverty is becoming more and more pressing,” Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti said in a video press conference Jan. 26.
The president of the Italian bishops’ conference said “the socio-economic situation in which our country finds itself is a source of growing concern: it is clear that a series of problems of a structural nature that have been known for a long time, and have been underestimated for a long time, must be addressed in an indelible way.”
Speaking at the start of the winter working session of the conference, the cardinal highlighted the “fractures” in society, which the coronavirus pandemic has transformed from “isolated to associated.”