VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis has condemned the “sin” of “not taking care of climate” as a “form of paganism.”
He has also added that “there is no going back” on the current “process of synodality.”
During his recent brief trip to Malta, Pope Francis met with 38 of his fellow Jesuits in the Nunciature on April 3. The informal 40 minute discussion ranged from issues regarding seminary formation and spiritual direction, to synodality, migration and “climate change.”
The official transcript was published in Jesuit-run magazine La Civilta Cattolica on April 14.
Towards the end of his meeting, Pope Francis was asked by one Jesuit priest about the issue of “climate change,” who expressed concern about how “the world burns, and we stay calm about it.”
“How do you connect evangelism and climate change?” the priest asked.
In response, Pope Francis declared that “not taking care of the climate is a sin against the gift of God that is creation.”
“In my opinion, this is a form of paganism: it is using those things that the Lord has given us for his glory and praise as if they were idols,” he continued.
“I think not caring for creation is like idolizing it, reducing it to an idol, detaching it from the gift of creation. In. this sense, caring for the communal home is already ‘evangelization’.”
Echoing sentiments he expressed in a 2020 TED Talk video – when he claimed there are less than “30 years” to prevent “catastrophic climate change” – Francis added: “If things go on as they are now, our children will no longer be able to live on our planet.”
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The Pope is no stranger to promoting the climate change argument, but has been contradicted by scientists in the field, who said the “Pope is getting terrible advice from some exalted churchmen who are seriously deficient in scientific knowledge.”
In 2017, Pope Francis appeared in a film warning of the dangers of climate change, and more recently encouraged climate change activist Greta Thunberg to continue her alarmist campaign for fighting climate change.
Pope Francis also sent a message to the United Nations 2019 conference on climate change, demanding political action to prevent climate change, as well as trying to ensure that the poor in society would be protected from its effects. Prior to that, in his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the Pope said, “We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own.”
However, pro-life and family advocates have continually expressed concern over the climate activism movement, as it is often aligned with pro-abortion and population control forces. Others criticize much of climate activism as being about garnering government grants and exerting increasing amount of state power.
The former Papal Nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, has also linked the passion surrounding “climate change” to a desire for increasing governmental control over daily life. Writing in May 20201, Viganò noted that green policies would become the successor to COVID mandates: “Even if the pandemic farce does not have the desired effects due to unforeseen events, we already have the next step ready: the climate emergency as the pretext for imposing the ‘ecological transition’ and ‘sustainable development’.”
RELATED: Questioning global warming should not be a mortal sin
The Australian prelate Cardinal George Pell has criticized the Pope’s 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato si, saying that the Church “has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.” Cardinal Pell has received much media backlash over the years for rejecting the ramped up fears of “climate change,” notably describing the movement in 2018 as an “intolerant bandwagon with loud, exaggerated claims.”
The Surgi-Center, a Washington, D.C. abortion clinic infamous for offering late, second trimester abortions, and its owner, abortionist Cesare Santangelo, are at the center of a scandal involving possible violations of federal laws against partial-birth abortion and infanticide.
In an exclusive video interview with LifeSiteNews, Lauren Handy, the director of activism at Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), told LifeSiteNew's Editor-in-Chief, John-Henry Westen that, with the help of a whistleblower, her organization rescued and properly buried the remains of about one hundred aborted babies from Santangelo's Surgi-Center.
But, five of the deceased babies were so large and so developed that they suspected the Surgi-Center of engaging in the illegal practices of partial-birth abortion or infanticide (i.e., killing the child after birth) à la Kermit Gosnell.
The shocked pro-lifers then gave the aborted babies to the police and brought the matter to the attention of the D.C. Medical Examiner's office. But, the Medical Examiner's office has refused to take any action, saying they will not perform autopsies on the babies.
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition to the Department of Justice, asking them to launch an investigation into alleged violations of federal law by Santangelo and the D.C. Surgi-Center, under either the Partial Birth Abortion Act (2003) or the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (2002). *Anyone - no matter where you reside - can sign this petition!
Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there.
Handy and eight of her fellow pro-life rescuers in PAAU are, themselves, now facing jail-time after being arrested by the FBI for conducting a traditional pro-life sit-in in October, 2020, at the very same abortion center from which the late-term deceased babies (mentioned above) were rescued.
Please note that the two events - the pro-life rescue in 2020 and the gruesome discovery of the five near-to-full-term babies in the Surgi-Center's "bio-medical waste" earlier this year - are almost one-and-a-half years apart.
Thus, Handy believes that their recent arrest is no coincidence...and, moreover, that the FBI is being used to create a smokescreen by arresting her and the other pro-lifers.
At the same time, the D.C. Medical Examiner's office does not seem interested in discovering the truth about the deaths of the five aborted babies and possible illegal partial-birth abortions or infanticide happening at the D.C. Surgi-Center.
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition to the Department of Justice, asking them to launch an investigation into alleged violations of federal law by Santangelo and the D.C. Surgi-Center, under either the Partial Birth Abortion Act (2003) or the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (2002).
The DOJ press release claims that the pro-lifers: "engaged in a conspiracy to create a blockade at the reproductive health care clinic to prevent the clinic from providing, and patients from receiving, reproductive health services."
But, commenting on the arrest, Lauren Handy stated: "Media reports have stated that we ‘invaded’ the abortion center and ‘disrupted’ women from exercising their ‘reproductive rights’. No, that is not what we did."
"We entered the clinic and sought to love the women who were already there for their abortion procedures," Handy said. "We tried to offer them help so they would choose life. We non-violently defended the unborn who were about to be exterminated – the innocent, the most vulnerable, killed in horrific acts of violence and treated as so much trash."
Tireless pro-life activist Dr. Monica Miller, the director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and leader of Red Rose Rescue, told LifeSiteNews that "this is the first time any of them are facing federal charges. That the rescuers were hunted down by FBI agents is unprecedented in the history of pro-life activism."
All of this...possibly...for discovering five near-or-at-term aborted babies at Cesare Santangelo's D.C. Surgi-Center, and for seeking to give justice and dignity to the murdered babies.
The truth now needs to come out!
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition to the Department of Justice, asking them to launch an investigation into alleged violations of federal law by Santangelo and the D.C. Surgi-Center, under either the Partial Birth Abortion Act (2003) or the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (2002).
Thank you for SIGNING and SHARING this urgent petition!
To contribute to the legal defense of Lauren Handy and the other eight members of PAAU, please CLICK on the following link to find out more about their LifeFunder campaign (also operated by LifeSiteNews): https://www.lifefunder.com/victims
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Pro-life hero raided by FBI speaks about the aborted babies she was trying to honor' - https://rumble.com/vzsslx-exclusive-pro-life-hero-raided-by-fbi-speaks-about-the-aborted-babies-she-w.html
'Pro-lifers arrested in FBI raids, face 11 years in prison for blocking access to late-term abortion mill' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pro-lifers-raided-charged-and-face-11-years-in-jail-for-blocking-access-to-infamous-dc-abortion-mill/
'BREAKING: Video surfaces of FBI raid, arrest of nonviolent pro-life activists' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-video-surfaces-of-biden-fbi-raid-arrest-of-nonviolent-pro-life-activists/
'Court Docs reveal previously unknown patient death due to negligence at late-term abortion facility' - https://www.operationrescue.org/archives/court-docs-reveal-previously-unknown-patient-death-due-to-negligence-at-late-term-abortion-facility/
**Photo Credit: YouTube screenshot of pro-lifers protesting outside the Surgi-Center abortion facility, in Washington, D.C.
Mixed messages on benefits of Synodality
In his meeting with the Jesuits in Malta, Francis also referred to “synodality,” a key theme word of the Bergoglian Vatican since the start of his pontificate. Asked about his “consolations and desolations” in the “process of synodality,” Francis referred to the controversial 2019 Synod on the Amazon.
“I’ll give you just one example,” he said, referencing what he called the “a lot of focus on the issue of married priests.”
Continuing, Pope Francis made reference to “catechists” and “permanent deacons,” perhaps alluding the seismic and revolutionary changes he made to the Church’s Tradition, allowing women to be formally instituted as acolytes and catechists. Francis stated:
Then the Spirit also made us understand that many other things were missing: catechists, permanent deacons, the seminary for aborigines, priests going to other dioceses or being moved within the same diocese. All this has been experienced amidst consolations and desolations. This is the spiritual dynamic of the Synod.
The 85-year-old Argentine did not shed further light on whether he thought the discussion of “married priests” was a consolation or a desolation for him.
‘There is no going back’ on synodality
However, the Pontiff was more precise on his intentions for the Church with regard to synodality, especially concerning the current Synod on Synodality. Praising Pope Paul VI for having “resumed the synodal discourse, which had been lost,” Francis said that the Church has “moved forward in understanding, in understanding what the Synod is.”
“Today we have moved forward and there is no going back,” he said. The issues raised by previous synods were “priesthood and synodality,” he said, which prompted the Synod on Synodality. “It seemed clear to me that we wanted to reflect on the theology of synodality in order to take a decisive step toward a synodal Church.”
RELATED: Vatican’s Synod on Synodality will consult non-Catholics, lapsed Catholics
Back in May 2021, liturgist and Thomist Dr. Peter Kwasniewski warned LifeSiteNews about the dangers in the modern understanding of synodality, declaring that in the concept “we see a continual submersion in bureaucracy, a surrender to the modern mentality of administration as the cure for all evils, which keeps the Church busy gazing at its navel while real evangelization withers and the pews empty out.”