Inés San Martín, Crux Now
Pope Francis, right, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual
leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, left, prepare to toss floral
wreaths into the sea on the Greek island of Lesbos, Saturday, April 16,
2016. The heads of the Catholic and Orthodox churches have conducted a
prayer ceremony for refugees at the port of Mytilene, the capital of the
Greek island of Lesbos where hundreds of thousands of have passed
through on perilous journeys from the Turkish coast toward Europe.
(L'Osservatore Romano/Pool photo via AP)
On a day marked by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople as a day of prayer for creation, Pope Francis on Thursday reaffirmed that he regards environmental damage such as global warming as a serious sin against creation and wants Christians to resist it
ROME- Insisting that environmental damage such as global warming
amounts to a sin against creation, Pope Francis on Thursday once again
called on Christians to join forces to protect the earth on what’s
ecumenically designated as the “World Day of Prayer for Creation.”
“To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against
ourselves and a sin against God,” the pope writes, quoting an address
the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew gave in Santa Barbara, California,
back in 1997.
Francis has long shared the interest for protecting the planet with Bartholomew.
In a message released by the Vatican on Thursday, Francis pointed out
the “sins” against creation, which include humans destroying the
ecosystem and degrading the integrity of the earth by causing changes in
its climate, and the contamination of the earth’s waters, land, air,
and life.
Keeping in mind both the Holy Year of Mercy and prayer day for
creation, celebrated on Sept. 1, Francis on Thursday called for
Catholics to add a new work of mercy to the traditional 14: “Care for
our common home.”
The works of mercy, as taught by the Catholic Church, are divided
into corporal and spiritual. The first seven, which include feeding the
hunger, giving drink to the thirsty and cloths to the naked, were
directly taken from the New Testament.
Yet on Thursday’s message, the pontiff proposes “a complement to the two traditional sets of seven.”
As a spiritual work of mercy, the care for our common home, Francis
wrote, “calls for a ‘grateful contemplation of God’s world.” As a
corporal one, instead, it requires “simple daily gestures which break
with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness” and “makes
itself felt in every action that seeks to build a better world.”
The “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation” is a global
ecumenical stewardship initiative, which began in 1989 under the
leadership of the Orthodox Church. Yet it wasn’t until last year that
the Catholic Church formally joined the initiative, with a letter from
Francis establishing it.
In that August 2015 letter, the pontiff wrote that an annual
commemoration of Creation would offer an opportunity to thank God for
the “wonderful handiwork entrusted to our care, and to implore God’s
help for the protection of creation,” an idea he reiterated on his
latest pro-environment message.
The pope’s message, titled “Show Mercy to our Common Home” is divided
into five sections, and it’s largely an appeal for “people of faith and
goodwill” to come together in “showing mercy to the earth as our common
home and cherishing the world in which we live as a place for sharing
and communion.”
As he did in his May 2015 environmental manifesto Laudato Si’,
Francis once again says that global warming is at least partially man
made, underlining that 2015 was the warmest year on record, and that
2016 will be warmer still.
Although some people remain skeptical still, the scientific community
has largely acknowledged that global warming due to pollution is
leading to ever more severe droughts, floods, fires and extreme weather
events.
“Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee
crisis,” Francis writes, adding that the world’s poor, though least
responsible for climate change, “are most vulnerable and already
suffering its impact.”
Francis also calls for the Jubilee of Mercy to summon in the faithful
to a “profound interior conversion,” sustained by the sacrament of
Confession, writing that after a “serious examination of conscience”
Catholics can confess their sins against the God and his creation.
The pope compared the need to make amends with the environment to
Saint John Paul II 2000 appeal for Catholics to ask for forgiveness for
past and present religious intolerance, “as well as for injustice
towards Jews, women, indigenous peoples, immigrants, the poor and the
unborn.”
“As individuals, we have grown comfortable with certain lifestyles
shaped by a distorted culture of prosperity,” with a desire to consume
more than what’s necessary, where “we are participants” in a system that
has imposed a mentality of profit at any price.
“Let us repent of the harm we are doing to our common home,” Francis writes.
Examining our consciences, repentance and confession, the pope
continues, will lead to a firm purpose to make amendments and take an
attitude more respectful of creation.
Quoting his own Laudato Si’, something he does often in
Thursday’s message, the pontiff gives several suggestions: “Avoiding the
use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating
refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for
other living beings, using public transport or car-pooling, planting
trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any number of other
practices.”
Calling on world leaders to uphold the Paris Climate Agreement and
the United Nations Development Goals- and society to demand they be
applied- the pontiff said that economics and politics, society and
culture can’t be dominated by “short-term and immediate financial or
electoral gains.”
“Instead, they urgently need to be redirected to the common good,
which includes sustainability and care for creation,” Francis’ message
says.
Christians of different denominations are marking the day of prayer
for creation, although for many it’ll go until October 4th, feast day of
St. Francis of Assisi.
The pontiff is not the only Christian leader to release a message for
the occasion. For instance, Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
stressed the importance of education to highlight the links between the
environmental crisis and the spiritual crisis of a world driven by
greed, gluttony and selfish desires.
The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Reverend Olav
Fykse Tveit, sent a video message, calling for the world “obsessed by
economic growth,” to radically rethink the ways of producing, trading
and consuming natural resources.
“In a world where nearly everything has a price tag, it’s time for us
to affirm once again that creation is not for sale,” he said.
Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, appointed by Francis on Wednesday as
the first head of a new super-department on human development, told a
Vatican news conference that Francis’s message of Thursday is the “next
logical step” after Laudato Si.
Turkson suggested, among other things, that Christians should use
their purchasing power to boycott certain companies or products until
they rethink their environmental footprint.
Terrence Ward, an author on hand for Thursday’s news conference,
called Laudato Si one of the most important papal documents of modern
times, saying it “a breathtaking moral, social, economic and spiritual
commentary on our modern epoch, fundamentally questioning our style of
life.”
Ward suggested that the concrete work of mercy called for by the pope is an important contribution to the pope’s Year of Mercy.