A Response to Pope Francis on Global Warming

Pope Francis has said many statements on global warming and how it’s damaging our earth. It’s causing confusion and even some controversy on where he stands with the topic. I visited St.John Neumann’s Roman Catholic Church, to get their view on what the Pope has said about the hot topic.

Pastor John Friel of St. John Neumann’s Roman Catholic Church spoke with me regarding the Pope’s statement on climate change.

“The point is the Pope is a spiritual leader and his job is to sensitize people to spiritual realities.”

In the summer of 2015, a letter from Pope Francis titled “Laudato Si” describes global warming a major threat to life on earth.

“It begins out with,”Praise to you Lord God of all creations, “he saying we are related to nature.Brother Sun, Sister Moon.When God created all that to place mankind in, he wanted to give mankind in charge of it, he didn’t say rape it, he said care of it.”

With media outlets taking the Pope’s words out of context, the church fears people may see him as a political leader.Some critics have said the Pope shouldn’t take sides on political issues, but Pastor John says otherwise.

“But with the media they go and say,”Well there this paragraph that say Global Warming,” Well yes and no.There’s paragraph in there about caring about our environment and caring for our nature.You know so much of the global warming stuff, it’s just politics, they politicize everything and you know we become divided people.What the Pope says, is calling us to be united people.So, that’s where the problem is when they look at the Pope when he speaks, they want to make him a politician, and he wants to make them good moral people.”

Now the Vatican is requiring students from the priesthood to learn about environmental issues, something Pastor John is pushing to the community.

“When we raise our consciousness to these kind of issues not for political reasons but for moral reasons they become embed.”