[ad_1]
VATICAN CITY – The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how the Earth can recover “if we let it rest” and should push people to adopt simpler lifestyles to help a planet “groaning” under constant demand for economic growth, Pope Francis said. last week.
In his latest urgent appeal to help a fragile environment, Francis also renewed his call for the cancellation of the debts of the most vulnerable countries. Such an action would be fair, he said, since rich countries have exploited the natural resources of poorer nations.
“In some ways, the current pandemic has led us to rediscover simpler and more sustainable lifestyles,” Francis said in a written message.
“We can already see how the Earth can recover if we let it rest: the air becomes cleaner, the waters clearer and the animals have returned to many places from where they had previously disappeared,” he wrote. “The pandemic has brought us to a crossroads.”
The pontiff urged people to take the opportunity to reflect on their energy use, consumption, transportation and diet habits.
So far, “constant demand for growth and an endless cycle of production and consumption are depleting the natural world,” the Pope said, adding: “Creation is groaning.”
People must be aware of their rightful place in nature, never thinking of themselves as owners of what Francis described as the “interconnected web of life.”
The disintegration of biodiversity, climatic disasters and the “unfair impact of the current pandemic on the poor and vulnerable” amount to a “wake-up call to our rampant greed and consumption,” the Pope wrote.
Francisco praised “our indigenous brothers and sisters who live in harmony with the land and its multiple ways of life.”
He urged to protect these communities from companies, particularly multinationals, which carry out a “destructive extraction” of resources such as fossil fuels, minerals and wood.
Citing the medical, social and economic crises brought on by the pandemic, Francis said it was “the time for restorative justice.”
“We must also ensure that the recovery packages that are being developed and deployed globally, regionally and nationally must be regeneration packages,” Francis said, without naming any particular nation or region.
Drawing attention to the fragility of the Earth is a hallmark of Francis’s papacy. In a 2015 encyclical, he poignantly emphasized people’s urgent responsibilities to heal and care for the environment.
The pontiff issued his appeal on the occasion of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, an annual occasion established for Christians in the wake of the encyclical Laudato Si ‘(Praise You!).
Francis called on all nations to “adopt more ambitious national targets to reduce emissions” that damage the environment. AP
