In his most powerful environment-themed address to date, Pope Francis has condemned the “culture of waste” and the economic system in which “men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption”.
Speaking on World Environment Day, the Pope referred to the proper stewardship of the earth. “Are we truly cultivating and caring for creation?” he asked. “Or are we exploiting and neglecting it?”
He said an understanding of the “rhythm and logic of creation” has often been trumped by “the arrogance of dominating, possessing, manipulating, and exploiting”.
“We are losing the attitude of wonder, contemplation, listening to creation,” the Pope said.
“We are living in a time of crisis: we see this in the environment, but above all we see this in mankind. The human person is in danger: this is certain, the human person is in danger today, here is the urgency of human ecology!”
Pope Francis decried the fact that when a child dies of starvation, “that’s not news”, but a drop of 10 points on the stock exchange “constitutes a tragedy”.
“Thus people are discarded as if they were garbage!” he said.
He said the human life of the person is no longer felt to be a primary value to be respected and protected, “especially if they are poor or disabled, if they are not yet useful — like an unborn child — or are no longer useful — like an old person”.
A culture of consumption has “made us insensitive to a squandering and wastefulness of food”, he said. “Remember, however, that the food that is thrown away is as if we had stolen it from the table of the poor, from those who are hungry!”
Pope Francis ended his talk with a call for commitment “to respect and care for creation, to be attentive to every person, to oppose the culture of wastefulness and waste, and to promote a culture of solidarity and encounter.”
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