On October 1, 2013, he was unable to shake the depressing feeling, of a story in a newspaper article. An old woman's body was discovered five years after she had died in a residential area in downtown Pusan. At that time, the landlord opened the door and found the skeleton of the grandmother with nine layers of thick clothes and gloves on her hands.
The building where the grandmother lived was a single-story multi-family house with a total of three households. The neighbors thought that she had left the house. The grandmother lived alone all her life and died alone.
The lonely death of a human being is always a sad situation, discovering a body five years after death in a white bone state, stunned him. The indifference of the neighborhood left him without words. How did our society get to this point? He was also embarrassed because he considered himself an "accomplice in this cruel indifference" living without paying attention to others in need, in a world we have made.
On October 3, 2020, Pope Francis published the Encyclical Fratelli tutti (All Brothers). As the title suggests, the pope emphasized that humans were not only created to have dignity as children of God but were also called to live as siblings. In our era, due to the development of science, technology, and the Internet, we are connected to the world and to each other completely different from any previous era.
When justice for brothers disappears due to indifference to each other, the world is filled with violence and all lives are in danger. If mankind today continues on the same path we will bring about greater disasters. We need to realize the danger that idolatry for money, wrong values, the challenge to God's created life order, the loss of brotherhood, and indifference to each other, also jeopardizes the community in which we live.
Pope Francis shines a light on our indifference through the parable of the Good Samaritan in chapter 10 of Luke's Gospel. Indifference is a cruel attitude of abandoning the 'dignity' of the vulnerable. On the other hand, this parable shows the fundamental choices we have to make to build a new world. It is to be a good Samaritan. When we go beyond indifference and callousness and seek a "common good" a collapsing community can enter the path of reconstruction. Pope Francis's words calling for "social responsibility" touched his heart. He finishes the article with the Pope's words: "A life of indifference in the face of suffering is not a choice we can make."
