2. Lucid despair menaces the living more than the frantic or irrational kind. The message of the suicide from beyond the grave is that, having peeled life back to the core, nothing was to be found.
3. Without going into an analysis of figures and statistics, it is sufficient to face squarely the reality of an innumerable multitude of people (children, adults and the elderly) in other words, real and unique human persons, who are suffering under the intolerable burden of poverty. There are many millions who are deprived of hope due to the fact that, in many parts of the world, their situation has noticeably worsened. (Papal Encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 30 December 1987).