{"id":307398,"date":"2020-06-16T07:32:15","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T05:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/there-is-no-future-without-the-elderly\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:41:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:41:01","slug":"there-is-no-future-without-the-elderly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/there-is-no-future-without-the-elderly\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;There is no Future without the Elderly&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Maria Voce is also among the signatories to the appeal promoted by the\u00a0 Community of Sant&#8217;Egidio \u00a0to re-humanize our societies. An \u00a0invitation to spread it and to sign it in order \u00a0to draw attention to the serious condition of the elderly following the &#8220;massacres&#8221; carried out by the pandemic.<\/em>  No to selective health care, no to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/francesco\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><u>&#8220;culture of abandonment&#8221;,<\/u><\/strong><\/a> no to any expropriation of individual rights; yes, instead, to equal treatment and the universal right to care. &#8220;The value of life remains the same for all. Whoever deprecates the fragile weakness of the elderly, prepares to devalue \u00a0all lives&#8221;.  The international appeal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.santegidio.org\/pageID\/37760\/langID\/en\/Appeal-There-is-no-future-without-the-elderly.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;<strong><u>Without the elderly, there is no future, to &#8216;re-humanize&#8217; our societies &#8211; Against &#8216;selective health care'&#8221;<\/u><\/strong> <\/a>supports a culture of life without exception\u00a0 and it was on June 15th , on the occasion of the World Elder Abuse Awareness Day , which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.santegidio.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><u>Sant&#8217;Egidio<\/u><\/strong><\/a> celebrated in all the countries where it is present.  Among the many <a href=\"https:\/\/www.santegidio.org\/pageID\/37760\/langID\/en\/Appeal-There-is-no-future-without-the-elderly.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><u>high profile endorsements<\/u><\/strong><\/a> is that of \u00a0the American economist Jeffrey Sachs, the Italian-British writer Simonetta Agnello Hornby, the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells and then Stefania Giannini, UNESCO\u2019s \u00a0Deputy Director General, as well as the founder of the Community of \u00a0Sant&#8217;Egidio, Andrea Riccardi, who is also the first signatory.  <strong>The president of the Focolare Movement also joined in and signed<\/strong>, inviting the communities of the movement worldwide to do the same, to draw attention, especially in Europe, to the condition of the elderly. &#8220;I share what the appeal denounces, namely the emergence, in the face of the dramatic health conditions that Covid-19 has brought to light, of a dangerous model that promotes selective health care that would in fact justify choosing \u00a0to care for the young, sacrificing the elderly. A society without\u00a0 the elderly \u00a0cannot be said to be such; a society that cannot benefit from the indispensable intergenerational relationship is a poor, monotonous society, incapable of planning and achieving a better future for all, of being \u00a0inclusive, because it is the result of the diversity that one encounters&#8221;.  In a note\u00a0 circulated by the Community of Sant\u2019Egidio \u00a0we read: &#8220;The appeal\u00a0 stems from the bitter observation of the very high number of victims of Covid-19 among the elderly population, in particular among people in institutions and nursing homes, and it \u00a0proposes a radical change of mentality that leads to new social and health initiatives&#8221;. A WHO \u00a0report noted, as early as 2018, that precisely &#8220;in institutions abuse rates are much higher than in community settings&#8221; including various \u00a0maltreatments including &#8220;physical restrictions, deprivation of dignity, imposition of daily chores, intentional provision of insufficient care, neglect and emotional abuse&#8221;. The situation worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic resulting, as is known, in a very high death rate in institutions, about twice as high as among the elderly living at home, according to data held by the Higher Institute of Health.  For this reason, on the World Elder Abuse Awareness Day , the Focolare Movement joined the Community of Sant&#8217;Egidio \u00a0in supporting the international appeal and the promotion of a &#8220;moral revolt to change direction in the care of the elderly&#8221;, \u00a0proposing to the state and local administrations the implementation of a system that privileges home care and assistance for the elderly population. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Stefania Tanesini<\/em><\/p>\n<p> <strong>Sign the appeal<\/strong> \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.santegidio.org\/pageID\/37760\/langID\/en\/Appeal-There-is-no-future-without-the-elderly.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><u>here<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maria Voce is also among the signatories to the appeal promoted by the\u00a0 Community of Sant&#8217;Egidio \u00a0to re-humanize our societies. An \u00a0invitation to spread it and to sign it in order \u00a0to draw attention to the serious condition of the elderly following the &#8220;massacres&#8221; carried out by the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}