Protecting Mother Earth top priority, says Pope

Tuesday, July 14th, 2015

Pope Francis has suggested that the most important task facing the world today is to protect Mother Earth.

Speaking at the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, on July 9, the Pope sounded a warning.

“Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home,” the earth, he said.

“Perhaps the most important” task facing the world today, the Pope said, “is to defend Mother Earth.

“Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed with impunity. Cowardice in defending it is a grave sin.”

“Today, the scientific community realises what the poor have long told us: Harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem,” Pope Francis said.

“The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished” by the effects of pollution, exploitation and climate change.

“And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called ‘the dung of the devil’ – an unfettered pursuit of money,” the Pope said.

When money becomes a person’s god, he said, greed becomes the chief motivator of what people do, permit or support.

In the end, he said, “it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home”.

In his speech, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church does not have a programme or “recipe” for solving the problems of injustice and poverty in the world.

He said the problems with the current system are obvious and the Gospel contains principles that can help.

Other “great tasks” which the Pope proposed were putting the economy at the service of people and uniting peoples on the path to peace and justice.

Sources