(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 6 - Democracy means resolving issues
together and not dirigisme, Pope Francis says in the
introduction to an anthology of his speeches, 'At The Heart Of
Democracy'.
"Democracy has inherent in it a great and unquestionable value:
that of being 'together', of the fact that the exercise of
government takes place within a community that freely and
secularly confronts each other in the art of the common good,
which is nothing but a different name for what we call
politics",says the 87-year-old Argentine pontiff.
The Pope underlines that "the difficulty of democracies in
taking on the complexity of the present time" sometimes seems to
"give way to the allure of populism".
Instead "it is precisely in the word 'participate' that we find
the authentic sense of what democracy is.
"In a statist or dirigiste regime no one participates, everyone
watches, passive. Democracy instead requires participation."
(ANSA).
Democracy is solving 'together', not dirigisme says pope
Difficulty in solving problems gives rise to populism says book