April 24, 2025 (EIRNS)—This is a moment when the veil of illusion of “current events” is temporarily pulled away to reveal suddenly, briefly, the face of history. The passing away of Pope Francis this past Easter Monday, in a moment of particularly great world turbulence, has provided billions of people—not only the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, but also those in the countries wherein they reside, and others—a unique opportunity for a form of reflection on immortality that is usually kept inaccessible from the masses of people, largely by “popular culture.”
It is altogether fitting and proper that those whose faith at least extends to the conviction that great ideas, combined with love, are the most powerful force in the world, should seize this moment to begin a conversation about why human life has a sacred importance to the universe. Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture, read now, and prior to the May 24-25 Schiller Institute Conference, “A Beautiful Vision for Humanity in Times of Great Turbulence!” can be understood somewhat more clearly, and taken more personally, right now, than otherwise. No matter one’s background, the Ten Principles can place anyone in the world who studies them at this time, at the level of the deliberations, in the intellectual center of the dialogue that must and should go on in these next weeks, in the institutions of the Presidency and the Papacy.
In the next weeks, during which the Cardinals of the Church of Rome will be meeting in conclave to elect a new pope, the Presidents of Russia, China, and the United States, and competent portions of their respective governments, must also enter into a higher level of deliberation on war and peace than has characterized their interactions since January 20, when Trump re-assumed the United States Presidency. How do we, who are not directly involved, ensure that the interests of the poor and dispossessed of the world, the billions on the margins, who represent the greatest source of wealth on the planet, are not merely represented but also transformed in these next weeks?
A passage from the Pope John XXIII’s 1963 Encyclical “Pacem In Terris/ Peace On Earth,” in its section 53, “Attainment of the Common Good Is the Purpose of the Public Authority” says: “Men, both as individuals and as intermediate groups, are required to make their own specific contributions to the general welfare. The main consequence of this is that they must harmonize their own interests with the needs of others, and offer their goods and services as their rulers shall direct—assuming, of course, that justice is maintained…. Those who have authority in the State must exercise that authority in a way which is not only morally irreproachable, but also best calculated to ensure or promote the State’s welfare.” It goes on to say, in section 54, “The attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities.”
The ideas of the General Welfare, the harmony of interest, and the responsibility of government to the people, are all contained there. While these ideas, central to the Pope’s intervention with President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to stop nuclear war, might seem to now be far above the “intellectual pay grade” of certain governments, it must not be so. The mastering of these ideas, in order to improve the world in the short time before us, is a task for which The LaRouche Organization was vectored from its inception.
Whether of unemployed welfare recipient, gang member, college student or factory worker, from the early days of its 1970s mass outreach to “average people in the street,” The LaRouche Organization demanded, in its publications and actions, the highest level of intellectual engagement from any and all of its readers. We knew what Frederick Douglass insisted—education abolished slavery. The citizens were expected to confront and master what they were required to know, to do what they desired to do, and thus become who they were required to be, in order to successfully change the world.
Besides being sponsored by the Schiller Institute, the May 24-25 conference is co-sponsored by the International Caucus of Labor Committees, the “seed crystal” organization from which all other LaRouche efforts originated. The late economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, in his 1977 document, titled “What Really Are the Labor Committees?—The Lessons of Erasmus and Franklin,” explained: “If you are for technological progress in the expansion of industry and agriculture, and define the vital interests of nations in those terms, and if you regard man’s power to create and assimilate scientific knowledge for the perfection of our species as the inviolable distinction between man and the lower beasts, then the Labor Committees are an indispensable aid to the cause you espouse, whatever political affiliation you have.”
As for Pope Francis, of whom many were justifiably critical, consider this passage from what he said on Easter, his last day on Earth. “Love has triumphed over hatred, light over darkness and truth over falsehood. Forgiveness has triumphed over revenge. Evil has not disappeared from history; it will remain until the end, but it no longer has the upper hand; it no longer has power over those who accept the grace of this day…. On this day, I would like all of us to hope anew and to revive our trust in others, including those who are different than ourselves, or who come from distant lands, bringing unfamiliar customs, ways of life and ideas! For all of us are children of God!” Look at how he spent that last day, including his ride in Saint Peter’s Square, and his greeting of people. The son of a railroad worker, he often spoke of people as “junctions.” “A junction connects, allows passage from … one rail to another; those who act as junctions do not only think for themselves, but multiply relationships and shared projects, knowing that the good of individuals and communities, at every level, passes from the good of all.”
The anomaly of human existence is that a man or woman, flawed and weak, can “in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye,” touch the face of immortality. The Founders of the United States did that in their Declaration of Independence. Crossing the junction between mortality and immortality, in the promotion of humanity’s General Welfare, is the task, and the “Beautiful Vision for Humanity” which is the proper subject of the conference deliberations of May 24-25, and of the other discussions that will characterize our world in these next days, should we choose to make it so.
