ANGELUS: WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR DEFENDING CREATION

VATICAN CITY, NOV 10, 2002 (VIS) - Before praying the Angelus today, the Pope told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square that on this second Sunday in November Italy celebrates Thanksgiving Day which is promoted by the National Confederation of Farmers.

John Paul II affirmed that we must give thanks to God for "the gifts received throughout the year and to the men and women who harvested them from the earth with their work. Farmers, often not taken into consideration in industrial societies, deserve appreciation for the important service that they provide to every human family."

"Taking care of creation," he continued, "is a duty for which everyone should feel responsible. ... In this sense, an authentic cultural change is necessary: we must go from the indiscriminate exploitation of resources to the responsible administration of the goods that creation offers to us."

The Holy Father recalled that the United Nations declared 2002 "The Year of the Mountain." "Mountains," he said, "are always capable of fascinating the human soul, to the point that in the Bible they are considered a privileged place to encounter God. In this way, they become a symbol of the elevation of the human being to the Creator."

"However," he ended, "mountains are not only places of rest and vacation; for many people, they are an environment of daily work, faced often in loneliness and isolation. The mountains are everyone's patrimony, and they must be respected, loved and attentively safeguarded by everyone. They are a common good whose integrity is precious for all of humanity."

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