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’.”
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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.”
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.”
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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.”