The Church of Rosario asked “to eradicate the accomplices of a corruption that kills”

There escalation of drug-related violence in Rosario, with the 12 year old boy’s crime and the Shooting at the supermarket of the parents of Antonela Roccuzzoprompted a reaction from the national government which announced yesterday – through a surprising recorded message from the President Alberto Fernandez– sending federal forces in Santa Fe with the collaboration of The army to urbanize popular neighborhoods.

In the midst of this context of insecurity experienced by the city of Santa Fe, the Archdiocese of Rosario released a lengthy statement titled Let’s break the silence that kills in which they make a biblical analogy to launch your petition: “Today, as Jesus did for Jerusalem, we must cry for our city that we love and live in”.

The social ministry of the archdiocese raised the “abandonment” suffered by the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Rosario with “deficient infrastructure in the electric lighting system, in sanitation, cleaning, public transport, in its asphalt and its sidewalks.

The migration of the inhabitants of this city, towards the outside of the country or the neighboring cities and urban centers, in the “search of a safer life”, according to the Church, has its problems in the political class. “Must get out of the stories slot and unite to make our neighborhoods a place where everyone can live with dignity; won’t if he does not give up discursive violence and eradicate from its ranks those who, by action or omission, are accomplices in a corruption that kills”, reads one of the most compelling passages of the letter.

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In turn, the long statement of the Ministry of Popular Neighborhoods and Ministry of Drug Addiction of the Archdiocese of Rosarioharshly criticized the government since, according to them, it was originally constituted in “a parastate that does not rotate every four years and which, over time, consolidates its power and its financial structure, offering weapons, lawyers, protection and many other resources”.

“Without a great social and political agreement, any declamation of a solution to what is happening, made by the candidates, is just a countryside mirage“, continues the message of the archdiocese.

According to the ecclesiastical authorities, to reverse this dramatic situation, the solution lies in programs that promote community support for children, adolescents and young people in vulnerable neighborhoods.

The voices of the Church complain about the institutional vacuum in Rosario during the holiday period, as well as during weekends in the city. “When the state is absent and the community is not supported in inclusion initiatives, other actors end up taking their place offering easy money, violence and death“, they condemned in a clear allusion to the drug trade which ravages the working-class neighborhoods.

To find a solution to this scourge, the Archdiocese plans to create “a healthcare system with an addictions perspective which allows the containment and support of people affected by the consumption of legal and illegal substances”.

The consumption of narcotics, according to the Church, generates not only deaths by gunshots, but also suicides, traffic and work accidents. “Family members also die because of the great stress and anguish they experience,” they justify.

The Rosario Church said national, provincial and municipal legislative powers “can be agile” in creating laws and ordinances to generate a “regulatory framework for the creation of new containment and accompanying devices.” And they cite an example: that of the creation of new schools with extended eight-hour days that can generate integral development for girls, boys and adolescents.

Among other demands, they ask that community-based residential treatment for children and adolescents with substance abuse problems as well as residential for people who suffer from addictive consumption.

You may be interested: “The drug gangs ruin everything, it’s terrible that a child is with a weapon”: the raw complaint of the Archbishop of Rosario

Moreover, they call for the creation of assisted homes -for people with mental health problems-, residential centers for womenwith or without children, who are victims of gender-based violence and addictive consumption. Also homeless shelters.

And the statement ends with a social prayer, a divine supplication: “We ask the Virgin of the Rosary who, like so many mothers, saw her Son die unjustly, who intercede, protect and bless this city with peace whom he saw being born and growing around him”.

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