The message, titled “Show Mercy to our Common Home”, reflects on the day of prayer as an occasion for Christians to “reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation” and to thank God “for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care”.
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Pope Francis attends a vesper prayer in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on Thursday.
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 a year ago in a bid to highlight his ecological concerns.
The pope said “we have sinned” and, referring to his encyclical from past year, he said mankind has turned God’s creation into a “polluted wasteland” full of “debris, desolation and filth”.
In an explanation of the message on the Vatican website, Cardinal Turkson, one of the Pontiff’s closest aides and often branded his “public face” on global warming, said he wanted the public to take affirmative action to tackle environmental ills. It also furnishes an occasion to thank God for the gift of creation, to implore his help for its protection and to beg “his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live”.
“Obviously “human life itself and everything it embraces” includes care for our common home”, says Francis, adding: “So let me propose a complement to the two traditional sets of seven: may the works of mercy also include care for our common home”.
The Pope announced the 1 September World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation previous year as part of a series of actions to increase the profile of environmental issues within the Church. “2015 was the warmest year on record, and 2016 will likely be warmer still”.
Perhaps most boldly, Francis charged that man is turning the planet into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”.
“In our rapidly changing and increasingly globalized world, many new forms of poverty are appearing”, Pope Francis said.
The first step on the path of conversion is to reflect on the harm done to creation by lifestyles inspired by “a distorted culture of prosperity”, which brings about a “disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary”, he said.
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Turkson, who now leads the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said the pope did not discuss the idea for new works of mercy with him beforehand.
Bishop Brian Farrell, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said he thinks other Christian denominations will “immediately understand the value of a work of mercy towards creation”.
An American author who has published a new book exploring Renaissance master Caravaggio’s famous depiction of the works of mercy also presented at the press conference.
Terrence Ward, author of the book “The Guardian of Mercy” and a panelist at the Vatican launch of the new document, said the works of mercy Francis is asking people to perform are “not about changing the world tomorrow”.
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“A modern work of mercy for our modern epoch”, Terrence Ward called it.
