As we look for solutions to returning to a greater post-pandemic economic activity, Pope Francis asks that we avoid any form of discrimination, including “consumerism” or “nationalism”. “We must look for solutions that will help us build a new future of work based on decent and dignified working conditions” always “promoting the common good”.

Migrants, along with other vulnerable workers and their families remain excluded from access to national health promotion, disease prevention,

treatment, and care programmes, as well as financial protection plans.... this exclusion complicates dealing with COVID-19,

increasing the risk of outbreaks, and additional threat to public health...The Church appeals to everyone to work together to serve the common good. The most vulnerable cannot be set aside. It is essential to the mission of the Church to ensure all people receive the protection the need according to their vulnerability.... Social protection systems... must be supported and expanded to ensure access to health services, food and basic human needs.

“The protection of workers and the most vulnerable must be ensured through the respect of their fundamental rights…including the right to organise in unions. There is a need for reform of the economic system, a deep reform…. The way the economy is run must be different, it must  change”.

“This virus spreads by thinking that life is better if it is better for me, and that everything is fine if it is fine for me, and so we begin and end by selecting one person over another, rejecting the poor, sacrificing those who have been left behind, on the so-called 'altar of progress'. It is a truly elitist dynamic, of building up new elites at the cost of discarding many people”.

Looking to the future, it is fundamental that the Church, and therefore the action of the Holy See with the ILO, support measures that correct unjust situations that condition labour relations and that completely subjugate them to the idea of “exclusion”, or that violate the fundamental rights of workers, said the Pope. To listen to the full speech, follow this link here: