NEW YORK CITY — Pope Francis told world leaders gathered at the United Nations on Sept. 25 they must work to protect creation because “a true ‘right of the environment’ does exist” — a right he said was bound up with a moral duty to assure the basic needs of “the vast ranks of the excluded.”
The global environment and the world’s powerless, he added, “are closely interconnected and made increasingly fragile by dominant political and economic relationships.”
Francis called for world leaders to secure for all people, and especially families, an “absolute minimum” of “lodging, labor and land” as well as “spiritual freedom which includes religious freedom, the right to education and other civil rights.”
“Without the recognition of certain incontestable natural ethical limits and without the immediate implementation of those pillars of integral human development,” Francis said, the goal of social progress “risks becoming an unattainable illusion or, even worse, idle chatter which serves as a cover for all kinds of abuse and corruption or for carrying out an ideological colonization by the imposition of anomalous models and lifestyles which are alien to people’s identity and, in the end, irresponsible.”
(RNS)
Share with others: