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Pope Francis and Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo

ROME, Italy, July 19, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – The head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences has again inferred that denial of the controversial concept of manmade climate change equates to flat earth mentality.

“From the scientific point of view, the sentence that the earth is warmed by human activity is as true as the sentence: The earth is round!” said Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo.

The archbishop has been a consistent and zealous promoter of manmade climate change as a non-negotiable Church issue, despite the status of care for the environment as a prudential matter.  

Climate change ideology continues to be contested as a ploy perpetrated with manipulated data by the left to enact environmental regulations and taxes.

Even so, Archbishop Sorondo dismissed deniers of climate change in a recent Vatican Radio interview as “a small, negligible minority.”

The interview conducted in German contained the headline: “Vatican: ‘Climate change is a fact,’” and centered on reception of Pope Francis’ eco-encyclical Laudato Si’ two years after its release.

Archbishop Sorondo went on in the interview to say that human-affected climate change was considered science. He added that the pope not only has the right but also the duty to rely on science in addition to doctrine and philosophy in seeking out truth.

If the pope expresses himself on such a subject, then this was not arbitrary, he said, as the pope’s words are not restricted to the area of ​​”doctrine of faith and morals.” 

The pope makes use of the truths of science or philosophy to not only explain to man how to get to heaven, said the archbishop, but also what he must do on earth. 

All human activities have to do with ethics, the Argentinean archbishop said, so they are already within the jurisdiction of the pope.

Archbishop Sorondo is a close adviser to Pope Francis and the Chancellor of both the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He has repeatedly welcomed pro-abortion and population control advocates to the Vatican for conferences under the pretext of the climate issue.

Last month, just before President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would pull out of the controversial Paris Climate Agreement, the archbishop likened climate ideology skeptics to flat-earthers as well.

Withdrawal from the Paris accord “would not only be a disaster but completely unscientific,” he said.

“Saying that we need to rely on coal and oil is like saying that the earth is not round,” Archbishop Sorondo stated. “It is an absurdity dictated by the need to make money.”

He has also repeatedly made the claim that those who don’t subscribe to the manmade climate change theory are in some way subsidized by the oil industry. He did so again in the Vatican Radio interview.

“Of course, some sectors that depend on the oil lobby — including some Catholic institutions! — do not agree with Laudato Si’,'” the archbishop stated. “And with this they are causing serious damage, because the climate is deteriorating — even the opponents of climate change will be among their victims, in the short or long term.”

Archbishop Sorondo drew a heated reaction at a December 2015 conference in Rome on Laudato Si’ by claiming that the pope’s pronouncements on  global warming expressed in his document are magisterial teaching with the same gravity as the Church’s teaching on abortion.

The archbishop had tried to float the idea then as well that climate change, then generally still labeled global warming, was a non-negotiable moral issue.

After asserting in his address that global warming was caused by human activity and twice claiming that Pope Francis’ teaching on it via Laudato Si’ was magisterial, other panel presenters at the conference challenged Archbishop Sorondo.

Acton Institute founder and president Father Robert Sirico explained citing the Catechism that the Church’s mission was spiritual and not political, economic or social.

“The Church does not claim to speak with the same authority on matters of economics and science as it does when pronouncing on matters of faith and morals,” he said.

Later during the question and answer session when asked about the weight of the pope’s opinions regarding global warming in Laudato Si’, Archbishop Sorondo said the “judgment must be considered magisterium – it is not an opinion.”

“It is under ordinary magisterium,” he said, “that abortion is a grievous sin – this is ordinary magisterium because there is not the revelation of it.” So there is an assumption of “moral doctrine,” he continued, that even though the majority opinion is contrary, we accept that “abortion is a grievous sin” is magisterium.

Journalist Riccardo Cascioli objected to the archbishop implying that Catholics must submit to pronouncements on scientific theories versus faith and morals, prompting a stern retort from Sorondo.

“When the Pope has assumed this, it is magisterium of the church whether you like it or not,” he stated. “It is the magisterium of the church just as abortion is a grievous sin – equal …  it is magisterium of the church … whether you like it or not.”