“IN the beginning, God created the heaven and earth,” Pope Francis quoted the very first verse of the Holy Bible in a special message he issued last Sunday. This is the story of Creation as told in Genesis, where, in six days, God created light, the firmament, lands with plants and trees, lights in the sky, animals in the seas and sky and land, and finally man and woman . At the end of every step of creation, the Bible said, “And God saw that it was good,”
The Pope issued his message to mark the start of several weeks of prayer by Christians everywhere to raise awareness about pollution and exploitation of natural resources. Tragically, the Pope said, so much of what God had created and found good is now being “exploited in human hands.”
The Pope spoke of how human hands have harmed the environment – reliance on fossil fuels like coal and oil, causing global warming and the melting of glaciers. He spoke of plastics and microplastics swamping the world’s oceans and killing sea life.
Even as he spoke at the Vatican in Rome, powerful Hurricane Dorian was devastating the Bahamas in the Caribbean on its way to Florida and the other eastern coastal states of the United States. After the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, the US had become the only country in the world to withdraw its support of the Paris agreement on climate change in 2015. And yet it is the world’s top source of industrial pollution which is the top cause of climate change.
But the Pope did not point his finger at any one nation. Later this month, he said, the United Nations will hold its Climate Action Summit, at which he said he hoped to see the world’s governments show “the political will to take drastic measures to achieve as quickly as possible the goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions to limit the rise in global temperatures causing climate change.”
The Pope’s message on pollution last Sunday marked the start of several weeks of prayer until October 4, feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, who loved and praised nature and animals. The Church in the Philippines, the only Christian nation in Asia, will be part of this observance.
We trust that our government and the whole nation will remain true to our national statement of support for the Paris agreement, including a pledge to develop greater reliance on renewable energy, away from polluting coal and other fossil sources of energy for our national growth and development.