Pope calls for action on climate change
In a message addressed to the Moroccan minister for foreign affairs, Salaheddine Mezouar, Pope Francis said we have a “grave ethical and moral responsibility” to act on climate change “without delay.” Mezouar, chaired the 22nd meeting of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change (COP22), which took place in Morocco
The Pope said that the poorest and future generations, especially, are depending on everyone setting aside particular interests and moving forward “in a manner as free as possible from political and economic pressures.”
“The current situation of environmental degradation, closely connected to the human, ethical and social degradation that unfortunately we experience every day, calls upon all of us, each with his or her own role and competences, and leads us to meet here with a renewed sense of awareness and responsibility,” he said.
Observing that the Paris Agreement has just gone into force, Francis said the adoption of that resolution less than a year ago “represents the important awareness that, faced with issues as complex as climate change, individual and / or national action is not enough; instead it is necessary to implement a responsible collective response truly intended to ‘work together in building our common home.’”
Francis said that the agreement strengthens our conviction that “we can and we must employ our intelligence to guide technology, as well as to cultivate and also to limit our power, and to ‘put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral’, able to put the economy at the service of the human person, to build peace and justice and to safeguard the environment.”
The Pope stated that awareness of our responsibility must drive each one of us to promote seriously a ‘culture of care which permeates all society’, care in relation to creation, but also for our neighbour, near or far in space and time. He concluded by declaring “The lifestyle based on the throwaway culture is unsustainable and must have no place in our models of development and education.”
ACN Malta
