Pope Francis Decries Earth’s ‘Unprecedented Ecological Crisis’

ROME — Pope Francis warned Monday that humanity is inflicting “serious wounds” on the environment and threw his moral weight behind the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).

Human beings are inflicting serious wounds on the environment “such as climate change, desertification, pollution and loss of biodiversity,” the pontiff said in a message in preparation for the U.N. conference.

These ecological wounds are the fruit of “seeds of conflict,” Francis said, namely “greed, indifference, ignorance, fear, injustice, insecurity and violence.”

Such conflicts, moreover, are leading to the breaking of the “covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying,” he added.

The only way to counteract climate change and other ecological ills is by “an urgently needed change of direction, nurtured also by our respective religious beliefs and spirituality,” the pope said. “We cannot act alone, for each of us is fundamentally responsible to care for others and for the environment.”

As he has often done, Francis promised his unconditional support to the U.N. climate change program, underscoring his belief that the world is undergoing an “unprecedented ecological crisis.”

“COP26 in Glasgow represents an urgent summons to provide effective responses to the unprecedented ecological crisis and the crisis of values that we are presently experiencing, and in this way to offer concrete hope to future generations,” he said. “We want to accompany it with our commitment and our spiritual closeness.”

Pope Francis has made ecology and the battle against climate change a pillar of his pontificate and in 2015 became the first pope in history to devote an entire encyclical letter to the topic of the environment.

This year, he reiterated his conviction that the earth is suffering the worst environmental crisis of its history.

For a long time, the earth “has suffered from the wounds that we cause due to a predatory attitude, which makes us feel like owners of the planet and its resources and authorizes us to irresponsibly use the goods that God has given us,” he said in a video message last May.

“Today, these wounds are dramatically manifested in an unprecedented ecological crisis that affects the soil, air, water and, in general, the ecosystem in which human beings live,” he added.

In February, Francis said it was his hope “that the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), to take place in Glasgow next November, will lead to effective agreement in addressing the consequences of climate change.”

“Now is the time to act, for we are already feeling the effects of prolonged inaction,” he warned.

The pope asserted that climate change is producing the gradual disappearance of “numerous small islands in the Pacific Ocean” and provoking “the destruction of entire villages” as well as displacement of families and communities “with the loss of their identity and culture.”

Francis also blamed climate change for floods in Vietnam and the Philippines as well as “increased warming of the earth, which has caused devastating fires in Australia and California.”

The effects of climate change are particularly grave in Africa, the pope declared, leading to food insecurity “with millions of people suffering from hunger.”

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