Vatican City
RNS
A day after the US Catholic bishops declared the fight against abortion their most urgent priority at their fall meeting in Baltimore, prioritizing it over protection of the environment, Pope Francis set the record straight in a scathing speech at the Vatican on Friday in which he condemned “ecological sins”.
Speaking to a gathering of prosecutors and criminologists, the Pope called for more accountability for international corporations that damage nations, people and the environment.
“One frequent omission of penal law is the insufficient attention the crimes of the powerful receive, especially the large-scale delinquency of corporations,” he told participants of the 20th World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law, a network of experts in penal law and criminology with more than 3,000 members.
Pope Francis is surrounded by bodyguards as he stands in his pope mobile during his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square, at the Vatican on 6th November. PICTURE: AP Photo/Andrew Medichini).
In his speech, Francis condemned global corporations that are responsible for “countries’ over-indebtedness and the plunder of our planet’s natural resources”. He said that their activities have the “gravity of crimes against humanity,” especially when they lead to hunger, poverty and the eradication of Indigenous peoples.
Such acts of “ecocide” must not go unpunished, said the Pope, who in October concluded a synod of bishops to discuss the Amazon region and the safeguarding of the environment.
“We must introduce, [the synod’s bishops] were thinking, in the catechism of the Catholic Church, the sin against ecology, against our common home, because it is our duty,” Francis said in an off-the-cuff remark.
Coming shortly after the gathering of the US episcopal conference, where the American bishops tackled a wide range of issues, from abortion to immigration to the environment, but made abortion the “preeminent priority” of their work, the Pope’s speech was heard in some quarters as a rebuke.
Crimes against the environment, the Pope said, “are a fifth category of crimes against peace, which should be recognised by the international community”, referring to the categories of crimes laid out in international law.
After breaking from his prepared remarks to condemn anti-Semitism at his weekly general audience on Wednesday, Francis had a few words of warning in Friday’s speech for politicians and other leaders whose rhetoric, he said, “recall the speeches made by Hitler in 1934-36″.
“It’s not an accident that at times the emblems and typical actions of Nazism reappear,” the Pope said, “with its persecution against Jews, gypsies, people with homosexual tendencies, it represents the negative model par-excellence of a hate and throw-away culture.”
Francis called out those who sway crowds toward increasingly punitive measures, which lead to violence and the use of force, usually coupled with “racist prejudice and contempt toward outcast social classes.”
“Our societies are called to progress toward a model of justice founded on dialogue, on encounter,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a utopia, but it’s certainly a great challenge. A challenge we must all face if we want to address the problems in our civil coexistence in a rational, peaceful and democratic way.”
