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Pope Francis Proposes Adding Care of the Environment to Works of Mercy
The modern world has new forms of poverty, Pope Francis said, and thus requires new forms of mercy to address them.
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On “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation”, Pope Francis hopes to “renew [his] dialogue with “every person living on this planet” about the sufferings of the poor and the devastation of the environment”.
“God gave us a bountiful garden, but we have turned it into a polluted wasteland of “debris, desolation and filth”.
“Global warming continues, due in part to human activity: 2015 was the warmest year on record, and 2016 will likely be warmer still”, he said in his message, according to Vatican Radio.
In his message, the Pope also applauded “a growing global political consensus” regarding the environment, praising the adoption of “Sustainable Development Goals” as well as last December’s Paris Agreement on climate change, “which set the demanding yet fundamental goal of halting the rise of the global temperature”.
Calling for concrete actions that benefit human life and the environment, Pope Francis proposed adding the care and protection of creation to the traditional list of corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
In June a year ago, the Pope issued a stern encyclical on the environment, slamming a slew of energy-guzzling modern trends including the heedless worship of technology, our addiction to fossil fuels and compulsive consumerism.
After evaluating and amending our own lives in terms of how we personally care for creation, “Pope Francis is calling us toward a new work of mercy”.
On Thursday the Pope tweeted, “God gave us the earth “to till and to keep” in a balanced and respectful way”.
In an innovation that surprised many church-watchers and upset some traditionalists, Francis said that prayer and action to protect the environment should be added to the venerable seven corporal works of mercy and the seven spiritual works of mercy drawn from the Gospels and Christian tradition.
Francis stressed that human beings were “deeply connected” to all elements of creation and needed to examine their conscience and repent.
He made the remarks in a message marking the “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation”.
Francisis seen as favorable to many politically progressive causes, without altering official church doctrine.
The new dicastry will be headed by Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, one of the principal authors of Francis’s 2016 encyclical “Laudato Si” (“Praise Be”).
“We must not think that these efforts are too small to improve our world”.
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In particular, Pope Francis issued a clarion call to the world’s citizens to put pressure on their governments to respect the commitments they made a year ago at the United Nations in NY to sustainable development goals and last December in Paris to halt the rise of global temperatures.