ROME — The international community must make the “ecological commitment” a top priority, Pope Francis said in an interview published Sunday.
“We have not awakened in the face of planetary wars and injustices, we have not listened to the cry of the poor, and of our gravely ill planet,” the pontiff told the Italian daily Il Mattino. “We thought we would always remain healthy in a sick world.”
“Today a time of trial, a time of choice,” the pope declared. “The time to choose what matters and what doesn’t, to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is time to change course.”
As he has said on numerous occasions, the pope declared that it is not enough to tweak existing systems, insisting that politics and the economy need to be rethought and completely overhauled.
The drama of land fires in southern Italy “is connected to the many dramas that the earth suffers from,” Francis said. And our mistakes “fall on the little ones, from whom we are stealing not only the future, but also the present.”
Starting from an awareness that the world is interconnected, we must not only acknowledge our errors but also “identify new behaviors” and “seek new solutions,” he said.
“It is indispensable today for every single person and the entire international community to prioritize the ecological commitment to collective, supportive and far-sighted actions,” he said. “And it is essential that the younger generations do not let their future be stolen by those who preceded them.”
In 2021, Francis declared that things would never be the same in a post-pandemic world and called for the establishment of a “new world order.”
In a book-length interview, the pope restated his case for the Great Reset with a shift away from financial speculation, fossil fuels, and a military build-up toward a green economy based on inclusiveness.
“We can no longer blithely accept inequalities and disruptions to the environment,” he said. “The path to humanity’s salvation passes through the creation of a new model of development, which unquestionably focuses on coexistence among peoples in harmony with Creation.”
“If we don’t roll up our sleeves and immediately take care of the Earth, with radical personal and political choices, with an economic ‘green’ turn by directing technological developments in this direction, sooner or later our common home will throw us out the window,” he declared.
Similarly, in a 2020 op-ed for the New York Times, the pope said that this “is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of.”
“God asks us to dare to create something new,” he said. “We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor.”
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