Pope: Religions To Oppose Environmental Devastation

Sudan Events – Sumaya Sayed

Pope Francis said on Sunday that it was essential for all world religions to unite in opposing the “rapacious” devastation of the environment.
The 86-year-old pope had planned to preside at the opening of the Faith Pavilion at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, but a lung inflammation forced him to remain in the Vatican.
Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, read the pope’s message in his place, as he did with Pope Francis’ main address to the conference on Saturday.
“Religions, as voices of conscience for humanity, remind us that we are finite creatures, possessed of a need for the infinite,” the pope said, noting that a Faith Pavilion was a first at a COP conference.
Religions, he said, “need, urgently, to act for the sake of the environment,” educate their members to “sober and fraternal lifestyles” instead of wasteful ones and work for a return to the individual contemplation of nature’s grandeur.
“This is an essential obligation for religions, which are called to teach contemplation, since creation is not only an ecosystem to preserve, but also a gift to embrace,” Pope Francis said.
“A world poor in contemplation will be a world polluted in soul, a world that will continue to discard people and produce waste,” he said.
In his main address to the conference on Saturday, Pope Francis repeated his call for the elimination of fossil fuels.
Hundreds of Catholic institutions around the globe have announced plans to divest from them.