ROME — Pope Francis said Wednesday that the earth, sea, and all creatures possess a “mystical capacity” to bring humanity to God and into communion with nature.
“As many spiritual masters have taught us, heaven, earth, sea, and every creature have an iconic capacity or mystical capacity to bring us back to the Creator and to communion with creation,” the pontiff wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, Pope Francis once again lamented the negative effects of global warming, insisting that it would generate “many, many difficulties.”
“Today I was reading in the newspaper about those two great glaciers in Antarctica, near the Amundsen Sea: they are about to fall,” he said. “It will be terrible, because the sea level will rise and this will bring many, many difficulties and cause so much harm.”
“And why? Because of global warming, not caring for the environment, not caring for the common home,” the pope told pilgrims gathered in the Vatican’s San Damaso courtyard for his weekly general audience.
“All forms of life are interconnected, and our health depends on that of the ecosystems that God created and entrusted to us to care for,” the pope stated. “Abusing them, on the other hand, is a grave sin that damages us, and harms us, and makes us sick.”
“Exploiting creation: this is the sin,” Francis said. “We believe that we are at the centre, claiming to occupy God’s place and so we ruin the harmony of creation, the harmony of God’s plan.”
“We become predators, forgetting our vocation as custodians of life,” he said. “Of course, we can and must work the earth so as to live and to develop. But work is not synonymous with exploitation, and it is always accompanied by care: ploughing and protecting, working and caring… This is our mission.”
“Our poorest brothers and sisters and our mother earth lament for the damage and injustice we have caused, and demand we take another course,” he said. “It demands of us a conversion, a change of path; taking care of the earth too, of creation.”