ROME — Pope Francis urged a delegation of Cambodian Buddhists to conversion this week not to Christianity, but to environmental responsibility.
The pontiff addressed the Vatican to Buddhists on Thursday. He did not mention Jesus’ name, but he repeated four times that he believed in Jesus. “ecological conversion”As the common calling for Buddhists as well as Christians.
“Ecological conversion happens when the human roots of the present environmental crisis are named,”The pope argued, “when true repentance leads to the slowing or halting of trends, ideologies and practices that are hurtful and disrespectful to the earth.”
The conversion takes place also when “people commit to promoting models of developments that heal wounds inflicted by greed, excessive search for financial profits, lack of solidarity with neighbors and disrespect for the environment,”He said.
Conversion to ecological living “calls us to change gears, to change bad habits in order to be able to dream, co-create, and act together to realize just and equitable futures,”He concluded.
Buddhism as well Christianity provide a variety of ways to continue your efforts. “cultivate ecological responsibility,”Francis was the one who proposed. “In following the tenets that the Buddha left as a legacy to his disciples, including the practices of metta, which involves not harming living things, and living a simple lifestyle, Buddhists can achieve a compassionate protection for all beings, including the earth, their habitat.”
Christians are for their part “fulfill their ecological responsibility when, as trustworthy stewards, they protect Creation, the work God has entrusted to them ‘to till and to keep,’”He said.
Francis was the first pope to ever write an entire Encyclical Letter on Environmentalism in 2015. He stated that environmental degradation has caused the destruction of sister Earth. “to cry out, pleading that we take another course.”
“Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain,” he declared. “We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth.”
“The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world,”He stated.
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