Pope Francis challenges humanity to fight global warming in historic encyclical

[hrmjustin]

Rosie Scammell


VATICAN CITY (RNS) Climate change is a mostly man-made phenomenon worsened by rich countries whose people keep feeding their “self-destructive vices,” Pope Francis says in an unprecedented papal document released on Thursday (June 18).

In the first papal letter dedicated to the environment, a key theme of Francis’ papacy, the pope uses a tone of prophetic urgency to describe climate change as “a global problem with grave implications” and one that requires a “bold cultural revolution” in mankind’s thinking.

“Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age,” Francis writes, “but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur.”

http://www.religionnews.com/2015/06/18/pope-francis-challenges-humanity-to-fight-global-warming-in-historic-encyclical/