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Both are ultimately due to the same evil: the notion that there are no indisputable truths to guide our lives, and hence human freedom is limitless.

The social environment has also suffered damage. Pope Benedict asked us to recognize that the natural environment has been gravely damaged by our irresponsible behaviour. It follows that “the deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence”. He observed that the world cannot be analyzed by isolating only one of its aspects, since “the book of nature is one and indivisible”, and includes the environment, life, sexuality, the family, social relations, and so forth. My predecessor Benedict XVI likewise proposed “eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and correcting models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment”. Accordingly, our human ability to transform reality must proceed in line with God’s original gift of all that is.

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It presumes full respect for the human person, but it must also be concerned for the world around us and “take into account the nature of each being and of its mutual connection in an ordered system”. Authentic human development has a moral character. Every effort to protect and improve our world entails profound changes in “lifestyles, models of production and consumption, and the established structures of power which today govern societies”. The destruction of the human environment is extremely serious, not only because God has entrusted the world to us men and women, but because human life is itself a gift which must be defended from various forms of debasement. At the same time, he noted that little effort had been made to “safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology”. Subsequently, he would call for a global ecological conversion. In his first Encyclical he warned that human beings frequently seem “to see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption”. Saint John Paul II became increasingly concerned about this issue. He spoke in similar terms to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations about the potential for an “ecological catastrophe under the effective explosion of industrial civilization”, and stressed “the urgent need for a radical change in the conduct of humanity”, inasmuch as “the most extraordinary scientific advances, the most amazing technical abilities, the most astonishing economic growth, unless they are accompanied by authentic social and moral progress, will definitively turn against man”. In 1971, eight years after Pacem in Terris, Blessed Pope Paul VI referred to the ecological concern as “a tragic consequence” of unchecked human activity: “Due to an ill-considered exploitation of nature, humanity runs the risk of destroying it and becoming in turn a victim of this degradation”. In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.Ĥ. In my Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I wrote to all the members of the Church with the aim of encouraging ongoing missionary renewal. Now, faced as we are with global environmental deterioration, I wish to address every person living on this planet. He addressed his message Pacem in Terris to the entire “Catholic world” and indeed “to all men and women of good will”. More than fifty years ago, with the world teetering on the brink of nuclear crisis, Pope Saint John XXIII wrote an Encyclical which not only rejected war but offered a proposal for peace. Nothing in this world is indifferent to usģ. Gen 2:7) our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor she “groans in travail” ( Rom 8:22). The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”.