Pope pledges to continue reforms in face of leaks

Bharti Airtel, a leading telecommunications services provider with over 300 million customers and operations in 20 countries across Africa and Asia has partnered with the Catholic Church as a platinum sponsor for the upcoming historic visit of His Holiness Pope Francis to Kenya.

Luca Giusti, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Prato, said the Chinese workers represent “unfair competition because they don’t respect the rules”, and encourage a risky drop in standards in labour conditions.

Pope Francis recognizes the extreme importance of education by setting up the Congregation for Catholic Education.

He said: “The life of every community requires that we fight the cancer of corruption, the cancer of human and labor exploitation and the poison of illegality”. Wherever we find ourselves, he said, we must “never construct walls or borders, but [rather] piazzas and field hospitals”. The fire exit at the factory was reported at the time to have been blocked by flammable fabric, causing the deaths.

Officially, Prato is home to around 40,000 Chinese immigrants, with only 16,000 officially registered.

Pope Francis spoke to participants in the Fifth National Ecclesial Convention of the Italian Church, who are gathered in Florence for five days to discuss the theme, “A new humanism in Jesus Christ”.

He called on Catholics to be “a free Church that is open to the challenges of the present, never on the defensive for fear of losing something”.

However, it’s so easy to be tempted to take advantage of the comforts that come with status and to start living “comfortably without honesty, like those Pharisees Jesus talks about, who stroll in the squares, making sure they are seen”, the pope said.

The scribes, the pope said, show signs of pride, greed and hypocrisy. He warned that without knowing how people think, “a disciple becomes isolated and begins to judge people according to his own thoughts and convictions”.

Francis urged locals not to “resign yourself in front of apparently hard situations of coexistence” with Chinese garment workers in the city, where numerous Italian firms have been forced to close up shop, unable to compete.

“It is the only way to speak to the hearts of people, touching their daily experience”, said Francis.

God is asking that we listen to each other, and that we are “ready to leave something in order to reach someone with whom can be shared the joy of having encountered the Lord and also the fatigue of walking on the road”.