Cardinal Turkson on long term impact of Laudato Si'
(Vatican Radio) Almost a year
on from its publication, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, on the care for
our common home, has had an important impact at local and international levels.
That’s according to the head
of the Pontifical Justice and Peace Council, Cardinal Peter Turkson, who was
taking part in a panel discussion in the Vatican on Monday about U.S. and Holy
See engagement on issues of common concern.
The encyclical, signed by the
Pope on May 24th 2015, explores the interconnected concerns of caring for the
human life and protecting the environment, appealing for action based on an
interior ecological conversion.
Over the past year, Cardinal
Turkson, whose Council worked on the drawing up of the document, has been
travelling widely, speaking about its relevance to many other areas of
financial, social and environmental policy.
He says Laudato Si’ has had a
significant impact in highlighting the effects of human activity on our
environment…
Cardinal Turkson recalls that
right after the publication of the encyclical the UN organised an event to
explore what kind of moral support it could lend to the process of combatting
climate change.
One month later, he says, the
French president, François Hollande opened a conference called Consciences for
Climate, quoting widely from the document.
The cardinal says he has
spoken since then at many U.S. universities and colleges, highlighting local
needs and concerns, such as the impact of rising sea levels off the Florida
coast. Climate related disasters, he says, are increasingly “making it
difficult for people to live wholesome and peaceful lives” and it’s important
to ask “to what extent are people contributing to that”.
Speaking of his own
experience growing up in mining town in Ghana, Cardinal Turkson describes the
effect that surface mining has on the local environment: “the forest has gone,
the topsoil is gone, agriculture is affected, the water board is affected –
that’s a drastic change caused by human activity.
Similarly, he continues, the
African agricultural practice known as ‘slash and burn’ creates “a lot of
savannah in place of forests”. These examples, he says, show how human activity
“can induce, worsen or even provoke” climate change.
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