2023-06-05 18:35:00
June 5, 2023 / 11:35 a.m.
Pope Francis affirmed this Monday, World Environment Day 2023, that in the Vatican “plastic is prohibited” and stressed that the contamination caused by this material constitutes a threat to life.
The Holy Father addressed the problem of pollution caused by plastic in the sea on June 5, during an audience with the promoters of the fourth edition of the Green and Blue Festival, which will be held in Milan (Italy) from June 19 to 20. October 2023. The objective of the initiative is to promote a great communication platform that offers concrete solutions on the environment for this century.
The Pope also recalled that on Monday he had received Christopher John Kempczinski, president of the McDonald’s Corporation, the fast food restaurant chain, in a private audience, and mentioned a detail related to the environmental protection policy applied in the City of Vatican.
“Today the people from the McDonald’s group, the restaurant owner, came and told me that they have abolished plastic and everything is made with recyclable paper, everything… Plastic is prohibited in the Vatican. And we have achieved 93%, they told me , without plastic. These are steps, real steps that we must continue,” he said.
More than fifty years after the first conference on the environment in Stockholm on June 5, 1972, under the auspices of the United Nations, many things have changed, Pope Francis explained.
Peter’s Successor also recalled the Paris Climate Change Conference and added: “The experts make it clear that the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have repercussions for thousands of years.”
In addition, he maintained that “the phenomenon of climate change insistently reminds us of our responsibilities: it particularly affects the poorest and most fragile, those who have contributed the least to its evolution. It is first a matter of justice and then solidarity.”
The Holy Father once again denounced the culture of discarding and the need for “good practices”, following the example of the fishermen of San Benedetto del Tronto, in central Italy, who, despite the costs that this implied, decided to help cleaning the sea by extracting the plastic that fell into their nets.
And so he narrated what they had told him a few years ago: “For us at first the choice was a bit difficult, because bringing plastic instead of fish did not give us money. But there was something: that the love for creation was greater. Here are the plastic and the fish… And so they went on. But it costs!”
Pope Francis indicated that protecting the sea has costs: “It costs money! It is necessary to accelerate this change of direction in favor of a culture of care —as children are cared for—, which puts human dignity and the common good at the center”.
It is a question of life that is nourished by that “alliance between human beings and the environment that must be a reflection of the creative love of God, from which we proceed and towards which we walk”, the Holy Father stressed, recalling a few words of Benedict XVI.
“Let us not rob the new generations of the hope of a better future”, concluded the Successor of Peter.
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