Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Seville 1618 - 1682), Boys playing dice, around 1675/80, oil on canvas, 146 x 108.5 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek 

Signs of hope: the poor 

There are several paintings that the great Spanish painter dedicated to the childhood which he could probably observe every day on the streets of Seville. They are vivid testimonies of the great poverty in which the majority of the population of Andalusia's most important city lived at the end of the 17th century.

This magnificent painting also presents this reality to us. It does so, first of all, by showing how the three protagonists are dressed: threadbare, dirty clothes, barefoot or wearing shoes with soles so worn that half their feet show through. The very fact that they spend their time on the street playing dice with the few coins we are able to see, tells us of a degraded human environment, where the little ones are left at the mercy of the street, with all the dangers that this entails.

Yet the painter's gaze towards these three children is full of care and compassion. He certainly does not look at them with contempt or even with superiority, but rather places them before our eyes in the truth of their condition, so that the same feelings may arise in us. We are particularly struck by the astonished gaze of the youngest child, who is not taking part in the game in which his two older friends are engaged. He seems almost to have stopped nibbling on the piece of bread that had kept him busy until then (and also keeps the dog busy, possibily a stray, who seems to be waiting for a few crumbs to fall), while his large dark eyes stare at the painter who is perhaps drawing the scene in his sketchbook. And through the painter those eyes reach us, the spectators, who after almost four centuries allow ourselves to be captivated by the innocence of the gaze and perhaps think of children and youngsters in our suburbs or those in too many cities in countries in Africa or Latin America where the same poverty that Murillo saw is unfortunately still present.

The realism of the scene we see is certainly an interesting testimony to the living conditions of the time, but for us, in these days of the Jubilee journey, it can become an occasion for reflection on those "signs of hope" which Pope Francis wished to entrust to the whole Christian community. Reflection that can lead us to change our comfortable lifestyles, to denounce living conditions that are not worthy of our humanity, to identify concrete ways of promoting human dignity and supporting those who are still victims of poverty.

I ask with all my heart that hope be granted to the billions of the poor, who often lack the essentials of life. Before the constant tide of new forms of impoverishment, we can easily grow inured and resigned. Yet we must not close our eyes to the dramatic situations that we now encounter all around us, not only in certain parts of the world. Each day we meet people who are poor or impoverished; they may even be our next-door neighbours. Often they are homeless or lack sufficient food for the day. They suffer from exclusion and indifference on the part of many. It is scandalous that in a world possessed of immense resources, destined largely to producing weapons, the poor continue to be “the majority of the planet’s population, billions of people. These days they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems are brought up as an afterthought, a question which gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile”.  Let us not forget: the poor are almost always the victims, not the ones to blame.

(Francis, Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee 2025 Spes non confundit 15)

(Contribution by Vito Pongolini)