The coronavirus pandemic forces us to wear masks and lock ourselves away... And it calls into question the fraternity and social friendship to which Pope Francis dedicated his latest encyclical "All Brothers and Sisters".
Fraternity and social friendship go together. Social friendship reflects a common commitment, a reciprocity in an attentive look and a gesture that takes care of the other.
Friendship mobilizes everything that makes communication between us, it can go through digital connections certainly, but it needs the language of our bodies. Pope Francis in his encyclical speaks of " physical gestures, facial expressions, silences, body language, even perfume, trembling hands, blushing, sweating" (§43) which are necessary for social life and the expression of social friendship between us.
The Covid news requires us to live this social friendship with restraint, to respect each other by wearing a mask on the face and staying at a distance: a sad but necessary mark of fraternity. However, this does not mean indifference, or fear towards the other.
On the contrary, Pope Francis uses the image of the mask to show that the Covid-19 pandemic is unmasking our vulnerability and our interdependence.
The Pope speaks of the pandemic as " the storm that unmasks our vulnerability and reveals those false and superfluous securities with which we have built our agendas, our projects, our habits and priorities. [...] Thanks to the storm, the make-up of stereotypes with which we hid our egos always preoccupied with their image has fallen away; and there remains evident, once again, that [happy] common belonging [...], from which we cannot escape: the fact of being brothers" (§32); " no one is saved alone "; " it is possible to save ourselves only together" (§32), as brothers.
Pope Francis also uses the parable of the Samaritan to evoke how, before the man on the ground, there is no longer any distinction between the inhabitant of Judea and the inhabitant of Samaria, there is no longer any question of priest or merchant; there are simply two types of people: those who take charge of the pain and those who ignore it; those who bend down recognizing the man on the ground and those who look away and quicken their pace. Indeed, our multiple masks, our labels and our accoutrements fall: it is the moment of truth! Will we bend down to touch and heal the wounds of others? Will we bend down to carry one another on our shoulders? This is the current challenge of which we must not be afraid" Pope Francis tells us again (§70).
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