Care for creation is part of peacemaking, Pope tells COP30

As the international community rightly focuses on resolving war and conflict, countries must recognise that “peace is also threatened” by climate change and environmental destruction, the Pope said in a message to the Leaders Summit of COP30 in Belem, Brazil.

“If you want to cultivate peace, care for creation,” the Pope told the leaders.

Threats to peace are heightened “by a lack of due respect for creation, by the plundering of natural resources and by a progressive decline in the quality of life because of climate change”, said the message, read to the assembly on November 7 by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state and head of the Vatican delegation to COP30.

Pope Leo quoted Pope Benedict XVI’s message for World Peace Day 2010: “The quest for peace by people of goodwill surely would become easier if all acknowledge the indivisible relationship between God, human beings and the whole of creation.”

Climate change, pollution and the destruction that follows the thoughtless exploitation of natural resources have a global impact, Pope Leo said, and they “endanger the lives of everyone on this planet”.

Pope Leo also quoted St John Paul II’s message for World Peace Day 1990, which said that “the ecological crisis ‘is a moral issue’ and, as such, it ‘reveals the urgent moral need for a new solidarity, especially in relations among the developing nations and those that are highly industrialised’.”

“Tragically,” Pope Leo said, “those in the most vulnerable situations are the first to suffer the devastating effects of climate change, deforestation and pollution. Caring for creation, therefore, becomes an expression of humanity and solidarity.”

The Pope asked the global leaders to work together to achieve a concrete plan that puts “the sacredness of life, the God-given dignity of every human being and the common good at its centre”.

Pope Leo also prayed for an “ecological conversion” that would include recognising the need for a “new human-centred international financial architecture that ensures all countries, especially the poorest and those most vulnerable to climate disasters, can reach their full potential and see the dignity of their citizens respected”.

FULL STORY

Caring for creation is part of peacemaking, pope tells COP30 (By Cindy Wooden/CNS)

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