Pope Francis: audience, “exploiting creation: this is the sin”. “We become predators”

“Without contemplation, it is easy to fall prey to an unbalanced and arrogant anthropocentrism, the ‘I’ at the centre of everything, which gives excessive importance to our role as human beings, positioning us as absolute rulers of all other creatures”. This is according to Pope Francis, who in his general audience catechesis today, delivered in the San Damaso courtyard in front of some 500 people, argued that “a distorted interpretation of biblical texts on creation has contributed to this misinterpretation, which leads to the exploitation of the earth to the point of suffocating it”. “Exploiting creation: this is the sin”, Pope Francis warned, speaking off the cuff. “We believe that we are at the centre, claiming to occupy God’s place and so we ruin the harmony of creation, the harmony of God’s plan”, he lamented: “We become predators, forgetting our vocation as custodians of life”. “Our common home, creation, is not a mere resource”, the Pope recalled: “Creatures have a value in and of themselves and each one reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. This value and this ray of divine light must be discovered and, in order to discover it, we need to be silent, we need to listen, and we need to contemplate”. “Contemplation also heals the soul”, he added off the cuff.
Valentina Bombelli