While the rich reap most of the benefits of technological development, the poor bear an unequal burden of dealing with the consequences of the resulting increased pollution. The poor continue to live in greatest proximity to the sources of pollution, the infrastructure and machinery of industry. They work in the most polluted and physically dangerous workplaces. And these same individuals, living and working closest to the sources of environmental catastrophe, are also the ones most lacking decent health care.

Anger and humor are like the left and right arm. They complement each other. Anger empowers the poor to declare their uncompromising opposition to oppression, and humor prevents them from being consumed by their fury.

In the act of worship itself, the experience of liberation becomes a constituent of the community's being . . . It is the power of God's Spirit invading the lives of the people, "building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side".

To sing about freedom and to pray for its coming is not enough. Freedom must be actualized in history by oppressed peoples who accept the intellectual challenge to analyze the world for the purpose of changing it.

Anger and humour are like the left and right arm. They complement each other.

Indeed our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived by the people. If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to appropriate it, for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.

Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.