(PresidentialWire.com)- “Mother Earth groans and begs us to stop our abuse,” the pope remarked Wednesday.
The Pope said September 1 would be the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, beginning a month-long “Season of Creation” that will end on October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, after his weekly public audience in the Vatican.
The Pope continued by expressing his hope that everyone will be inspired to take care of our shared home by the call to listen to creation.
As he has done previously, Francis attributed the planet’s degradation to “consumerist excesses” before promoting the forthcoming United Nations climate change summit, which will take place from November 6 to November 18, 2022, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
He also stated that biodiversity loss and global warming are “twin disasters” for humanity.
He remarked that our sister Mother Earth groans and begs us to stop abusing and destroying her because of our consumerist indulgences.
The Pope expressed hope that the UN COP27 and COP15 summits may unite the human family in decisively confronting the twin issues of climate change and biodiversity loss during this Season of Creation.”
Francis urged the Holy See to join the 2015 Paris Climate Accord last month and reiterated his concern about the “emergency” of climate change, which the Holy See did.
In a letter to attendees of a climate conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Francis urged them to reduce emissions while also “helping and enabling humanity to adapt to ever-worsening changes to the environment.”
He claimed that the issue of climate change “has become an emergency that no longer lies at the periphery of society.”
Instead, it has taken on a prominent role, changing not only industrial and agricultural systems but also negatively affecting the entire human family, particularly the underprivileged and people who live on the economic outskirts of our planet.
He said that as God’s children, caring for our shared home “is not only a utilitarian activity but a moral imperative for all men and women.”
Francis continued by reiterating his conviction that environmental challenges, like climate change, pose “serious and growing problems” for humanity.
He omitted from his letter mentioning the good news that each year the number of deaths worldwide caused by extreme weather events has dramatically decreased and is now a minuscule fraction of what was just 100 years ago.
Climate researcher Bjorn Lomborg wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial last November that in the year 2020, “only 14,000 people will die on average each year from storms, floods, droughts, wildfires, and extreme temperatures,” compared to “nearly half a million people on average each year” a century ago.
