Vatican City, 18 June 2015 (VIS) –
This morning in the New Synod Hall Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah
Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council “Justice and Peace”,
introduced Pope Francis' Encyclical “Laudato si'”, on care for
our common home.
The cardinal welcomed the presenters of
the document: the Metropolitan of Pergamon, John Zizioulas,
representing the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church, who
spoke on theology and spirituality, the opening and closing themes of
the encyclical; Professor John Schellnhuber, founder and director of
the Institute for Climate Impact in Potsdam, Federal Republic of
Germany, representing the field of natural sciences, with which the
encyclical enters into profound dialogue, and who was recently
appointed as an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of the
Sciences; Carolyn Woo, president of Catholic Relief Services and
former dean of the Mendoza College of Business of the University of
Notre Dame, U.S.A., representing the sectors of economy, finance,
trade and commerce, whose responses to the great environmental
challenges are crucial; and Valeria Martano, a teacher for 20 years
in the outskirts of Rome and witness to human and environmental
degradation, as well as to some examples of “best practice”, a
sign of hope.
The speakers demonstrated that the
Encyclical, from the very beginning, seeks to establish a dialogue
with all, both individuals as well as the organisations and
institutions that share the same concerns as the Pope, approached
from different perspectives, in a global situation that renders them
increasingly intertwined and complementary. “This type of dialogue
was also employed as the method of preparation that the Holy Father
embraced in the writing of the Encyclical”, said Cardinal Turkson.
“He relied on a wide range of contributions. Some, in particular
those from many Episcopal Conferences from all the continents, are
mentioned. ... Others who participated in the various phases of this
work … remain unnamed. The Lord knows well how to reward their
generosity and dedication”.
The Encyclical takes its name from the
invocation of St Francis of Assisi: “Laudato si’ mi’ Signore”
“Praise be to you, my Lord”. “The reference to St. Francis also
indicates the attitude upon which the entire encyclical is based,
that of prayerful contemplation, which invites us to look towards the
'poor one of Assisi” as a source of inspiration” and as the
quintessential example of “care for the vulnerable and of an
integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically”.
Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon
devoted a large part of his intervention to the ecumenism in “Laudato
si'”, and mentioned that in 1989 the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios
published an encyclical addressed to all Christians and persons of
good will warning of the seriousness of the ecological problem and
its theological and spiritual implications, and in the same year he
proposed the dedication of 1 September every year to prayer for the
environment. This date, according to the Orthodox calendar, is the
first day of the ecclesiastical year and now devoted to the
environment. The Metropolitan proposed the adoption by all Christians
of this day for prayer for the environment.
“I believe that the significance of
the papal Encyclical Laudato si' is not limited to the subject of
ecology as such. I see in it an important ecumenical dimension in
that it brings the divided Christians before a common task which they
must face together. We live at a time when fundamental existential
problems overwhelm our traditional divisions and relativise them
almost to the point of extinction. Look, for example, at what is
happening today in the Middle East: do those who persecute the
Christians ask them to which Church or Confession they belong?
Christian unity in such cases is de facto realised by persecution and
blood – an ecumenism of martyrdom”.
“The threat posed to us by the
ecological crisis similarly bypasses or transcends our traditional
divisions. The danger facing our common home, the planet on which we
live, is described in the Encyclical in a way leaving no doubt about
the existential risk we are confronted with. This risk is common to
all of us regardless of our ecclesiastical or confessional
identities. Equally common must be our effort to prevent the
catastrophic consequences of the present situation. Pope Francis'
Encyclical is a call to unity – unity in prayer for the
environment, in the same Gospel of Creation, in the conversion of our
hearts and our lifestyles to respect and love everyone and everything
given to us by God”.
Professor John Schellnhuber went on to
note that, from a technological perspective, the deployment of clean
energy for all is feasible and is, in fact, “available in
abundance. All we have to do is develop the means to properly harvest
it and responsibly manage our consumption. While we have been working
decade after decade on developing an incredibly expensive fusion
reactor, we are already blessed with one that works perfectly well
and is free to all of us: the Sun. Photovoltaics, wind and energy
from biomass are ultimately all powered by sunlight. These new
technologies could unfold potential in poor countries where no grid
exists to distribute electricity produced by centralised power plants
and where settlements may be too distantly located from one another
to make such as system feasible. Just like the evolving use of mobile
phones without the previous establishment of landlines, developing
countries could leapfrog the fossil episode and enter the age of
decentralised renewable energy production without detour”.
“The care for our planet therefore
does not have to evolve into a tragedy of the commons. It may well
turn into a story of great transformation in which the opportunity
was seized to overcome profound inequalities. These disparities arose
from the geological coincidence of regional fossil fuel distribution
controlled by the few and the concomitant exploitation. Today, the
implications of our actions and the pathways are clear. It is solely
a question of what future we choose to believe in and to pursue”.
Carolyn Woo, the president of Catholic
Relief Services and former dean of the Mendoza College of Business of
the University of Notre Dame, U.S.A., as an expert in economics and
finance, affirmed that investing in sustainability is “another
win-win opportunity for business”, given that “numerous studies
have provided estimates of astronomical costs associated with coastal
disasters as water levels rise, drought and storms that devastate
agricultural production, or loss in productivity due to growing days
of extreme heat and health crises due to pollution. … Business can
play a role to assist customers to become responsible consumers.
Design and production that minimises waste by utilising renewable
energy sources, improving efficiencies, enabling recycling,
reclamation and re-use provides new opportunities for businesses as
these enable consumers to do their part”.
“This Encyclical certainly affirms
the important role that business will need to play, but Pope Francis
is clear that we need partnerships between public and private sectors
– as he puts it, 'politics and economics in dialogue for human
fulfilment'. Since both public and private sectors have the same
goal, and are integrated into the same interconnected web of life,
they need to work together in harmony. Sometimes that means business
being more accepting of stronger forms of regulation, especially in
the financial sector. It also means business getting fully on board
with the new Sustainable Development Goals and the need to take
action to combat climate change. At the end of the day, business is a
human enterprise and must strive for true human development and the
common good”.
Finally, the teacher Valeria Martano
talked about urban ecology, endangered by pollution, inadequate
services and generalised individualism, as a challenge for
Christians. The quality of life in the suburbs is poor, she
emphasised: “there is a build-up of rage and a sense of exclusion.
Too many people are denied the dignity of a house, such as the Roma
community, and often we witness the destruction of precarious
dwellings without the offer of an alternative. The elderly are
'expelled' from the social fabric and located in peripheral
institutions. … We encounter violence in some quarters. But we can
help live better if we reject this resignation to individualism. …
For years, with the Sant'Egidio Community, we have worked to save
spaces from pollution. … Starting with the weakest – children,
the elderly, the disabled – we reconstruct a human fabric. …
Around the weak, it is possible to renew the face of the suburbs,
discovering energies that renew human ecology”.
“The Encyclical invites us to put
into practice the common good”, she concluded. “The city and the
environment are our common home. We often live according to human
itineraries: fragmented and contradictory. Each person tries to save
himself, in his own corner. Everyone follows his own interest. But
there is a 'community salvation' that starts from the inclusion of
the weak, a valuable resource for an integral ecology”.
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