Sulla Cura Della Casa Comune Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si', The Mother Earth, our common home" On 18th June was presented Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato si'", a 246-paragraph-long document divided into six chapters, in Vatican.
After mentioning the contribution of "the beloved Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew", who has inspired his work, particularly by claiming "the need for each of us to repent of the ways we have harmed the planet", Bergoglio addresses his "green" encyclical to all human beings, not only Christians.
Indeed, he affirms that, considering the global deterioration of the environment, he wants to speak "to every person who lives on this planet", since the urgent challenge is not only to protect our common home, but also to involve the whole human family to achieving a sustainable development.
Our common home, "cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will."
The traces of the sins we have committed, considering ourselves as lords of "our common home", can be definitely found in the symptoms of our wounded, polluted home, namely both damages to soil, water, air and harms to human beings, especially to poors.
Papa Francesco invites all of us to learn from franciscan tradition that reminds us that we have to take care of Mother Earth, instead of forgetting that human beings are composed by the natural elements of the planet as well.
The environmental issues faced by him such as pollution, global warming, depletion of natural resources, waste management, global inequality, let look his encyclical like a sort of religious manifesto of Environmental Justice.
He claims the need of an "ecological conversion" that takes into account "the bond between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace", and urges to take a common responsibility in terms of the consequences of the actions, that impact our common home. Human roots of such ecological crisis are linked to our development model and according to the Pope are basically due to the culture of relativism, the dominant technocratic paradigm, and "compulsive consumerism" that are destroying politics, freedom and justice.
Read more details here.
|  Image: © creedline |
