Its premature leaked release almost exactly
coincided with last Wednesday’s day of climate action in central London. It was a day designed to alert newly elected
M.P.s – and everybody else – to the urgency of taking action. There is a crucial United Nations Climate
Change Summit in Paris this December and Pope Francis has put a tremendous
amount of preparation into this document in the hope that the world will take
note of the importance of the issue. He
has invited a number of experts on the subject to help him to sound a clear
message.
He emphasised the vital importance of protecting
the environment on the very day of his inauguration as Bishop of Rome. Noting that it was the Feast of St Joseph
(March 19th) – the protector of the Holy Family – he emphasised that
we are all called to be protectors of the human family and the home that God
has provided for us in this life – and for the generations that will follow us,
as well as for all the rich diversity of life.
But Pope Francis is not the first Pope to emphasise
the importance of caring for creation.
Forty-four years ago Paul VI in an apostolic letter ‘Octogesima Adveniens’
said: ‘by an ill-considered exploitation of nature, mankind risks destroying
it.’ In the following year – 1972 – in a
message to the United Nations conference on the environment, he said: ‘Today
indeed there is a growing awareness that man and his environment are more
inseparable than ever. The environment
essentially conditions man’s life and development, while man, in his turn,
perfects and ennobles his environment through his presence, work and
contemplation. Human creativeness will
yield true and lasting benefits only to the extent to which man respects the
laws that govern the vital impulse and nature’s capacity for regeneration. So man is warned of the necessity of
replacing the unchecked advance of materiel progress, often blind and
turbulent, with new-found respect for the biosphere of his global domain’.
In 1990 Pope John Paul II in his World Day of Peace
message said: ‘World peace is threatened by a lack of due respect for
nature.’ In 2002 Pope John Paul II and
Patriarch Bartholomew in a joint declaration on environmental ethics said: ‘We
have been making decisions, taking actions and assigning values that are
leading us away from the world as it should be, away from the design of God for
creation, away from all that is essential for a healthy planet and a happy
commonwealth of people. A new approach
and a new culture are necessary, based on the centrality of the human person
within creation and inspired by environmentally ethical behaviour stemming from
our triple relationship to God, to self and to creation.’
Pope Benedict XVI’s regular utterances on the
subject led to him being called ‘the green Pope’. For example in his 2009 encyclical ‘Caritas
in Veritate’ he wrote: ‘We must recognise our grave duty to hand the earth on
to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it
and continue to cultivate it.’ Pope
Benedict’s 2010 World Day of Peace message was entitled ‘If you want to
cultivate peace, care for creation.’ In
it he says: 'The environment must be seen as God’s gift to all people, and the
use we make of it entails a shared responsibility for all humanity, especially
the poor and future generations.’
The new encyclical is sub-titled ‘On the care of
our common home.’ Caring for our home is
something we have to do every day.
Sometimes we have to make big sacrifices to ensure that it remains in
good order. It does not take care of
itself – not even if we are gentle with it.
But the earth that is our home and the home of all humanity – and
destined to be the home for all future generations – has not been treated
gently. It continues to be abused in all
kinds of ways. It is God’s gift to all
of us and to all who come after us. God
has given us the task of taking care of it.
He has made us stewards of his creation.
As St Francis of Assisi tells us in his canticle, God is praised when
his creation is respected. Laudato Si!
