The main aim of this article is to present the results of research on energy poverty conducted in Katowice and Bytom, two cities situated in the Silesian voivodeship [region] in Poland. The study attempted to verify whether the energy divide concept elaborated by Bouzarovski and Tirado Herrero (2015) has different undiscovered dimensions which result not only from the differences in energy prices and incomes between various regions, but also from other factors such as consumer behaviours. In discussions about the energy divide, this aspect of energy poverty has so far been rather neglected. The question remains whether the distinction between energy poverty levels of countries, regions, and other territories like cities is determined by consumer behaviours or only by income and energy prices. Katowice and Bytom seem to be perfect places to conduct such. The most important conclusions emerging from the presented research are: (a) low income does not affect the behaviour of people suffering from energy poverty, even though it theoretically should; (b) despite their difficult financial situation, low-income households do little to improve their situation; and (c) public policy should take into account in the spatial distribution of households affected by energy poverty other aspects, including non-income and behavioural factors and patterns of persons affected by energy poverty, which only deepen existing social inequalities rather than reduce them.

As recent studies showed, the post-communist countries have relatively the highest level of energy poverty in Europe. The poorest of them still are not explored. So, the authors decided to study this problem for Ukraine as one of the largest and poorest post-communist countries in Europe. This Eastern European country experienced a number of challenges before the pandemic, including a war with Russia in the east of the country, high external debt, high energy intensity and low added value of the economy. The purpose of this study is to measure how deep the energy poverty problem in Ukraine is and how it changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying selected quantitative and financial indicators, the authors showed the problem of energy poverty in Ukraine remained acute at the beginning of 2020, especially in terms of heating. Moreover, its level in Ukraine was three times higher than the average level for the all the EU countries. Furthermore, in 2020, during the pandemic, there were drastic increasing arrears of households on utility bills that meant a new leap of energy poverty in Ukraine. This study did not search for the causes of the identified leap in energy poverty, which apparently connected with the global and local economic and social consequences of the pandemic. However, it revealed the depth of this problem and the lower impact of the nature factor (air temperature) on energy poverty during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Further research is required to identify the underlying drivers and develop possible solutions to this problem in Ukraine and other European countries suffering from high energy poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and pandemics in general, affect socioeconomically disadvantaged people more severely. This is due not only to their precarious living, health, and working conditions, but also to public actions and omissions. However, their plight remains mostly invisible to the public, governments, and legislators, which raises many questions regarding respect of their fundamental rights. In this contribution, I explore these questions in light of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). On the basis of the corpus of literature in the field and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law, I show that the Strasbourg Court has developed some protection for people in a precarious situation, especially under the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment and the right to private and family life. This case law is likely to be relevant to the protection of socioeconomically underprivileged people during pandemics. However, this protection is limited and imbued with pitfalls. Against this background, I show that there is an urgent need for practitioners and courts to explore an additional tool under the ECHR: the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of socioeconomic status. This tool can be used to tackle issues of misrecognition which particularly affect socioeconomically underprivileged people, who are more severely affected by public actions and omissions in the context of the current pandemic.

The paper is a biblical-theological study that attempts to describe social groups which can be regarded as the poor in the light of teaching of Jesus . The study is based on the following biblical texts: Mk 1:15; cf . Mt 4:17; Lu 4:43, then Lk 4:18-19, Lk 6:20 and Mt 5:3 and several others. The poor of the Gospels are the first recipients of the kingdom of God. According to the author the evangelical poor have many different faces and also poverty has many dimensions. The first of all is the material lack and need. There are many other categories of poor people, for example those excluded from their social and religious position: widows and children, the little ones, am ha’aretz. Another category of the poor are the sick and suffering, sinners and the outlawed, men with an unclean spirit. All those people were the recipients and bene-ficiaries of the kingdom of God to come.

Coal is a naturally occurring solid fuel used, among others, for heating and for electricity production. Despite the development of the gas and heating network in our country, as well as the growing interest in the use of renewable energy sources, it still remains the most frequent fuel burned in local sources for the production of thermal energy. The article describes actual heating coal demand in the municipal and residential sector, with the distinction of different assortments, depending on the solid fuel heating source applied. Moreover, a subjective list of factors that have a key impact on the change in heating coal demand for this market was presented, taking the regulatory environment, global trends in housing heating and statistical surveys on the preferences for individual heat sources replacement into account. The confrontation of observed phenomena allowed for possible scenarios of changes in the demand for heating coal with the prospect until 2030, broken down into its individual assortments to be elaborated.

This article is about the Brazilian aid programme called Programa Bolsa Família. The programme has generated the interest of international institutions, the media, and the academic world on account of its scale, which provides an opportunity for fundamental social reform; and its measurable success, which is clearly visible in the poverty statistics; and above all, on account of participation being dependent on the fulfillment of specific requirements in the field of education, health, and social care. The author undertakes to go beyond an analysis based on statistics and to look at the functioning of the programme from the level of the participants. On the basis of his own research—that is, freely-conducted interviews with the inhabitants of favelas and rural settlements—he describes what lies behind the terminology and poverty statistics. His analysis of the situation of over a dozen participants in the programme makes it possible to see the immediate improvement of their material situation; the author claims, however, that a complete diagnosis will be possible only after the passage of a dozen or more years, by comparing the human capital (and labor market position) of the children of families taking part in the programme with the socio-economic position of those families today.

The analyses and conclusions presented in the article are based on the results of qualitative panel surveys conducted among large indigent families in the years 2013 to 2014 and in 2017. The survey attempted to answer the questions of whether and to what extent the implementation of a pro-family policy in Poland in 2016 influenced the situation of large families receiving institutional social aid. On what do these families spend the payments received from the Family 500+ programme? Has their new economic situation favoured their activation or increased their ability to manage? Could the programme, in consequence, hinder or limit the intergenerational transmission of poverty? The author concludes that in fact the effects of financing large families differ from those that were intended. The programme, which was intended to be pro-natal, has acquired the nature of social aid payments. It has improved the material situation of many families, but it has not sufficiently contributed to changing ways of thinking about the children’s futures, which would contribute to limiting the processes of inheriting poverty.

Pope Francis often speaks about the new evangelization. He notices areas that need a special care of the Church. One of them is the problem of poverty. The Pope encou-rages all the faithful to engage in the transformation of this situation . It can be called a “throwaway culture” and a sign of real poverty of the whole society when people remain indifferent to the cause of the poor. It is one of the negative consequences of the culture of prosperity. The Pope also calls it a “globalisation of indifference” and calls on all people of the three states in the Church to care for those who are poor and abandoned and to act against poverty. In a particular way Francis addresses his appeal to the consecrated persons, encouraging them to contemplate the poor Jesus, to the consecration of their lives through a faithful fulfilment of their vow of poverty and to the apostolate among the poor and the marginalized . By means of such an attitude of men and women religious they would contribute to their own sanctification, to bearing witness to love to the poor before the world and at least partly they will help those in need among whom they live and serve.

The article discusses the category of the option for the poor, by answering four key questions: 1) What is the option for the poor?; 2) Who are the poor?; 3) Why the option for the poor?; 4) How to opt? The category of the option for the poor emerged in Latin America at the turn of the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, as the fruit of an audit of faith and the personal, communitarian, social and ecclesial life . The author defines the category according to the teaching of the bishops (Medellin and Puebla), to John Paul II and Latin-American theologians . He highlights the need for clarifying the meaning of poverty and the poor, specifically of the current theological understanding of these concepts . He then describes main theological reasons of the option for the poor: God’s plan of salvation; the theology of creation; human dignity; the mystery of sin; the phenomenon of poverty as a place of proving the fundamental statements about God and Jesus Christ; an ecclesiological significance of the option for the poor. In the last part of the paper the author quotes the Polish translation of the so-called The Pact of St. Domitilla Catacombs, which illustrates one of more promising ways of implementing that option in both personal and ecclesial life.

The article is an interpretation of the teaching of Pope Francis on „the joy of the Gospel”. An analysis of the Exhortation Evangelii gaudium has led to the conclusion that the joy of the Gospel according to Francis is a Christian virtue. Traditional the-ology distinguishes two categories of virtues: theological and cardinal. Benedict XVI points out to a new group of virtues: ecclesial ones. According to Francis the basis of this joy is the adoption and proclamation of the Gospel. Its source is the person of Jesus Christ. Through the union with Him, the human person is liberated from alien-ation, selfishness and slavery. The joy of the Gospel is being revealed in the dialogue which is an exchange of gifts between individual persons. It takes place in an en-counter which gives an opportunity to know one another, God and man. The ecclesial context of joy is presented in the personal opening to Christ and in the opening of the Church to all people. Christian joy, based on Pope Francis’ concept of the joy of the Gospel, can be qualified as one of the ecclesial virtues.

The main task of the paper is to analyse pope Benedict XVI’s social teaching on poverty as introduced in the encyclical letter ‘Caritas in veritate’. While the methodo-logical language of the papal teaching is anthropological and theological in character, the document uses its own interdisciplinary approach that is characteristic of Catholic Social Teaching. Consequently such a Christian reflection on social issues like pover-ty, inequality, marginalisation and globalisation can be compared with other social fin-dings. In the global context the pope identifies growing economic inequalities but also the advantages of cooperation within the global economy. The analysis also discerns the theories of social development that are convergent with the papal social diagnosis. Finally, comparing the pope’s social teaching with some studies in economy, sociolo-gy and political sciences, the author of the paper examines the possibility to construct an interdisciplinary link between Catholic Social Teaching and other social sciences.

This article deals with the ekphrastic text/image (photography) relationships in Eli, Eli, Wojciech Tochman and Grzegorz Wełnicki's 2013 reportage from the slums of the Philippine capital Manila. The photos and the ekphrastic texts form a compact whole intended to produce the effect of unvarnished truth. It is this quality, the insistence on bearing witness to the truth, no matter how shocking, that determines the genre of Eli, Eli. The counterpointal arrangement of the images and the accompanying texts open the possibility of aesthetic and ethical discord between the testimony of the photographer and that of the reporter. However, in the end such tensions reinforce and validate the truthfulness of their report. This article discusses the strategy and the techniques deployed by the authors of Eli, Eli to establish a foolproof authenticity of their work.