Vatican reporters announced today (Rorate had tweeted about a week ago) that the new Encyclical by Francis will be signed and published on October 3, 2020. He will be in Assisi that day, the eve of the Feast of St. Francis.
The encyclical is to be titled "Fratelli tutti" (Brothers all, translated by the politically correct English translators in the Vatican news team as "Brothers and Sisters all"), and it will deal, "with fraternity and social friendship."
Many years ago, it feels as in another planet in another galaxy, the great Pope Leo XIII had already dealt with this matter -- he wrote about it in the main one of his various encyclicals speaking of the secular view of Fraternity, espoused by Freemasonry: Humanum Genus (April 20, 1884)
Pope Pecci wrote specifically about the Franciscan charism for true Christian fraternity: a fraternity that is born not of some kind of humanistic friendship, but of the filial relationship we were given by God through the life, passion, and sacrifice of his Only Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ:
By uniting the efforts of both clergy and laity, strive, venerable brethren, to make men thoroughly know and love the Church; for, the greater their knowledge and love of the Church, the more will they be turned away from clandestine societies.
Wherefore, not without cause do We use this occasion to state again what We have stated elsewhere, namely, that the Third Order of St. Francis, whose discipline We a little while ago prudently mitigated, should be studiously promoted and sustained; for the whole object of this Order, as constituted by its founder, is to invite men to an imitation of Jesus Christ, to a love of the Church, and to the observance of all Christian virtues; and therefore it ought to be of great influence in suppressing the contagion of wicked societies.
Let, therefore, this holy sodality be strengthened by a daily increase. Amongst the many benefits to be expected from it will be the great benefit of drawing the minds of men to liberty, fraternity, and equality of right; not such as the Freemasons absurdly imagine, but such as Jesus Christ obtained for the human race and St. Francis aspired to: the liberty, We mean, of sons of God, through which we may be free from slavery to Satan or to our passions, both of them most wicked masters; the fraternity whose origin is in God, the common Creator and Father of all; the equality which, founded on justice and charity, does not take away all distinctions among men, but, out of the varieties of life, of duties, and of pursuits, forms that union and that harmony which naturally tend to the benefit and dignity of society. [Humanum genus]
