1 September 2016 | Message

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE CARE OF CREATION: Show Mercy to our Common Home

  1. The earth cries out …

[…] Global warming continues, due in part to human activity: 2015 was the warmest year on record, and 2016 will likely be warmer still. This is leading to ever more severe droughts, floods, fires and extreme weather events. Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis. The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact. […]

  1. An examination of conscience and repentance

[…] In 2000, also a Jubilee Year, my predecessor Saint John Paul II asked Catholics to make amends for past and present religious intolerance, as well as for injustice towards Jews, women, indigenous peoples, immigrants, the poor and the unborn. In this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, I invite everyone to do likewise. As individuals, we have grown comfortable with certain lifestyles shaped by a distorted culture of prosperity and a “disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary” (Laudato Si’, 123), and we are participants in a system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.”[4] Let us repent of the harm we are doing to our common home. […]