Eternal life at stake in environment crisis, Pope says
June 27, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: In his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Pope Francis insists that care for the environment is an urgent spiritual cause.
“At stake is not only our earthly life in history, but also, and above all, our future in eternity,” the Pope says.
The World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation—an annual observance established by Pope Francis in 2015—will be held on September 1. The papal message for the occasion was released by the Vatican on June 27.
In the message the Pope says that creation “is subject to dissolution and eath, aggravated by the human abuse of nature.” For that reason, he says, it is “unable to fulfill the lasting meaning and purpose for which it was designed.”
In the course of the lengthy message the Pope writes:
To claim the right to possess and dominate nature, manipulating it at will, represents a form of idolatry, a Promethean version of man who, intoxicated by his technocratic power, arrogantly places the earth in a “dis-graced” condition, deprived of God’s grace.
Among the specific points in his message, the Pope cites “an urgent need to set ethical limits on the development of artificial intelligence, since its capacity for calculation and simulation can be used for domination over humanity and nature.”
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