The Pope’s encyclical on the environment is now finalised and is being translated into different languages, with an anticipated release in June.
Vatican officials made this announcement on April 28 at a one-day Rome summit on climate change.
According to a report on the Crux website, the President of the Pontifical Academy for Sciences, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, told the gathering: “The Pope said this morning that it’s finished.”
The encyclical will be divided into two parts, the bishop said.
Firstly , what Christianity calls “revelation”, which he defined as the idea that man is the steward of creation.
Secondly, the natural sciences, combining faith and reason.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the summit the encyclical is one of three factors that could turn 2015 into a critical year in the fight against climate change and global warming.
The other two, he said, are the signing of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals this September, and an international summit in Paris in December designed to achieve a global climate agreement.
At the invitation of Mr Ban, Francis will open the UN Special General Assembly on September 25, with more than 193 heads of state scheduled to be in attendance.
“We have an unprecedented opportunity to articulate — and create — a more sustainable future and a life of dignity for all,” Mr Ban said.
Titled “Protect the earth, protect humanity,” Tuesday’s one-day conference was designed to produce a joint statement on “the moral and religious imperative of dealing with climate change in the context of sustainable development”.
The conference’s final statement declared that: “Human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its decisive mitigation is a moral and religious imperative for humanity.”
During the conference, the Vatican’s science academy challenged politicians to end their “infatuation” with a form of economic growth that is ruining the Earth.
The academy said that nations were measuring their wealth by Gross Domestic Product, taking no account of the harm caused by business practises.
Before the summit, a climate change contrarian group urged the Pope to listen to both sides of the debate and not to take sides in politics.
Sources