Pope Francis Laments ‘Mother Earth Violated and Devastated’

Pope Francis Laments ‘Mother Earth Violated and Devastated’

Thomas D. Williams

In his annual message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the pontiff urges people of faith to embrace “creation as an earthly paradise, mother earth, which is meant to be a place of joy and a promise of happiness for all.”

Harmony among men and women “should also be extended to creation,” he writes in the message released Thursday, “in a sense of responsibility for a humane and integral ecology, the path to salvation for our common home and for us who inhabit it.”

This conversion “entails leaving behind the arrogance of those who want to exercise dominion over others and nature itself, reducing the latter to an object to be manipulated,” he adds, “and instead embracing the humility of those who care for others and for all of creation.”

To claim the right to possess and dominate nature “represents a form of idolatry,” Francis declares, “a Promethean version of man who, intoxicated by his technocratic power, arrogantly places the earth in a ‘dis-graced’ condition, deprived of God’s grace.”

The protection of creation “is not only an ethical issue, but one that is eminently theological, for it is the point where the mystery of man and the mystery of God intersect,” he asserts.

Thursday’s message is just the latest in an unbroken series of ecological pronouncements that have characterized Francis’ 11-year pontificate.

In 2015, he became the first pope in history to dedicate an entire encyclical letter to environmental issues. In that letter, bearing the Latin title Laudato Si (“Praised Be”), the pope urged Christians to become more ecologically aware and active.

Francis also decried a failure to recycle paper and other resources, while calling climate change “a global problem with grave implications” and “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

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