IT wasn’t that long ago that the tallest building in most cities was the spire of the local cathedral or church.
Nowadays, in most large cities, these same cathedrals and churches are dwarfed by a sea of concrete and glass skyscrapers, indicative of the loss of importance faith and religion have in many people’s lives.
Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris spoke of this ‘new poverty’ in the lives of city dwellers in his Helder Camara Lecture in Melbourne on August 6.
The lure of cities is only making them bigger and the lives of those who dwell in them less personal.
As Cardinal Lustiger observed in his lecture, ‘The megalopolis kills human dignity. Such destitution can smother the soul and the hope it harbours before it kills itself’.
May our cities again become an environment for hope and life, not a source of greater poverty.
