Pope Francis says neglecting the environment is a sin. [View all]

[pnwmom]

Last edited Thu Sep 1, 2016, 05:00 PM - Edit history (1)

And millions of Catholics agree -- another reason Catholic voters are strongly swinging to Hillary Clinton and away from what's-his-name.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/09/01/pope-francis-makes-care-for-the-planet-a-new-act-of-mercy-like-care-for-the-poor/

The modern world has new forms of poverty, Francis said, and thus requires new forms of mercy to address them.

“When we mistreat nature, we also mistreat human beings,” he wrote in his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which falls on Sept. 1. He discussed the effect of global warming, which he noted is caused in part by human activity, on the world’s poorest people.

“This is leading to ever more severe droughts, floods, fires and extreme weather events,” Francis wrote. “Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis. The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact.”

Environmental awareness, along with concern for the world’s poor, especially in the global south, has been a clear concern of Francis’s papacy since he became the first non-European pope since the eighth century. His first major treatise as pope was last year’s “Laudato Si,” an encyclical on the environment that linked human mishandling of the climate to mistreatment of the poor. He quoted frequently from that encyclical in his message Thursday.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pope-francis-environment-1.3744274

Pope Francis on Thursday proposed that caring for the environment be added to the traditional seven works of mercy that Christians are called to perform, taking his green agenda to a new level by supplementing Jesus' Gospel call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the sick.

Francis made the ambitious proposal in a message to mark the church's World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which he instituted last year in a bid to highlight his ecological concerns.

"God gave us the earth 'to till and to keep' in a balanced and respectful way," Francis said. "To till too much, to keep too little, is to sin."

Officials said the call was the logical extension of Francis' landmark and controversial ecological encyclical issued last year. In it, the world's first Latin American pope called for a revolution to correct what he said was a "structurally perverse" economic system in which the rich have exploited the poor and turned the Earth into an "immense pile of filth."

SNIP