Pope Francis on the Environment

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Pope Francis to publish encyclical on climate change

December 2014

'Catholic 'Encyclical'

• Pontiff hopes to inspire action at next year’s UN meeting in Paris in December

In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world’s main religions.

The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope’s wish to directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions.

“In this globalised world,” the Pontiff said, “we have fallen into globalised indifference.”

Next year, he will intervene again in the secular world. Today, the Observer reports his intention to write a letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN General Assembly and call for a summit of the world’s main religions. He will also issue a rare papal encyclical in March on climate change and human ecology, all part of an attempt strongly to influence the UN climate change meeting in Paris in 2015 to achieve a universal commitment to reduce carbon emissions. “Eco-theology” alarms creationists and divides the Catholic church. Opponents, including some in the Vatican, condemn it as “un-biblical”. Pope Francis sees economic inequality and the plundering of the Earth’s resources as part of a theme. He has said: “In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of accrued profits, whatever is fragile like the environment is defenceless against the interest of a deified market, which becomes the only rule.”

Pope Francis, the leader of one in six of the world’s population (41% in Latin America), is undoubtedly a man of change and with huge potential leverage.

Neil Thorns, head of advocacy at Cafod, was quoted by the Observer saying "The anticipation around Pope Francis's forthcoming encyclical is unprecedented. We have seen thousands of our supporters commit to making sure their MPs know climate change is affecting the poorest communities."

13 November 2014 / The Tablet

Pope Francis is to publish an encyclical on climate change and plans to convene a meeting of faith leaders on the issue ahead of two crucial summits on the environment next year.

The developments were revealed by Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, when he delivered Cafod’s annual Pope Paul VI lecture on Friday last week.

While it is known that Pope Francis has been working on a climate change encyclical, its time of publication had not previously been made public.

Bishop Sorondo, an Argentinian who is close to the Pope, said the encyclical would be produced in time to influence “next year’s crucial decisions”, which include a meeting in September at the United Nations to draft the Sustainable Development Goals and another gathering on climate change in Paris in December.

On the planned papal meeting the bishop said the Pope wanted to bring leaders of the main religions together “to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion”...

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CAMPOBASSO, Italy, July 5, 2014 (Reuters) - Pope Francis called for more respect for nature on Saturday, branding the destruction of South America's rain forests and other forms of environmental exploitation a sin of modern times.

In an address at the university of Molise, an agricultural and industrial region in southern Italy, Francis said the Earth should be allowed to give her fruits without being exploited.

"This is one of the greatest challenges of our time: to convert ourselves to a type of development that knows how to respect creation," he told students, struggling farmers, and laid-off workers in a university hall.

"When I look at America, also my own homeland (South America), so many forests, all cut, that have become land ... that can longer give life. This is our sin, exploiting the Earth and not allowing her to her give us what she has within her," the Argentine pope said in unprepared remarks.

Francis, who took his name from Francis of Assisi, the 13th century saint seen as the patron of animals and the environment, is writing an encyclical on man's relationship with nature.

Since his election in March, 2013, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics has made many appeals in defense of the environment.

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In May, Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) met with the pope to discuss the importance of acting on the warming planet instead of waiting idly. The week before that visit, Pope Francis compared battling climate change to safeguarding creation, advising the world that “if we destroy creation, creation will destroy us! Never forget this!”

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Exploiting the earth "is our sin," the pontiff says.

A Marketwatch opinion quotes the Pope: "This is one of the greatest challenges of our time: to convert ourselves to a type of development that knows how to respect creation.”

Marketwatch points out: Pope Francis has called consumerism a “poison.” Earlier this year he warned that “Christians should safeguard Creation,” for if humanity destroys the planet, humans themselves will ultimately be destroyed: He adds ‘Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few” capitalists. “Creation is a gift, a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, with great respect and gratitude.”

After commenting that the market is going to go on and on no matter the pontiff's warning, Marketwatch concludes on a plaintiff note: Maybe, just maybe, some of you will eventually change, before it’s too late."

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The green, pro-environmental positions of the Pope place him as a quite different voice in current political discussion and debate than an 'evangelical right-wing mainstream' where 'dominionism' runs deep in belief and environmentalism is seen as a threat.

This begins with the question of interpretation of biblical interpretation of 1:26 and exhortation in Genesis 1:28: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Many have cited the idea of dominion to justify an anthropocentric view of the world, in which nature exists solely to provide man with its bounty — a position that is often more prevalent in evangelical Protestant circles, especially within the United States.

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Pope Francis To World Leaders: Consumerism Represents ‘Constant Assault’ On The Environment

“There are constant assaults on the natural environment, the result of unbridled consumerism, and this will have serious consequences for the world economy.”

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How does Al Jazeera report on this religious leader? Pope Francis calls destruction of nature a modern sin

The Pontiff, who takes his name from the patron saint of animals and the environment, says humans are exploiting Earth

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In the new Pope's inaugural Mass on March 19, 2013:

“Please, I would like to ask all those with positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of good will: Let us be protectors of God’s creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.”