Rome, Italy, Dec 20, 2009 / 02:02 am
Pope Benedict XVI’s so-called “green revolution” differs in key ways from parts of the environmentalist movement, Vatican expert Sandro Magister says. While some forms of environmentalism place nature first in relation to mankind, he explains that the Pope has as his priority the “ecology of Man” in relation to God.
Magister, writing at www.chiesa.espressonline.it/?eng=y, commented on Pope Benedict's Dec. 8 message for the World Day of Peace, observed every January 1.
At the center of this message, he says, is the biblical image of the Garden of Eden, “entrusted by God to man and woman for them to protect and cultivate.”
“Nature therefore has no primacy over man, nor is man a tiny part of nature. Nor, in his turn, can man usurp the right to despoil nature instead of taking care of it,” Magister writes.