Pope Benedict’s environmentalism concerned with the ‘ecology of man,’ Vatican observer writes

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.

The Vatican analyst cites as an illustration a masterpiece of Piero della Francesca, which shows a “cultivated, orderly and luminous” background landscape highlighting the same characteristics of the woman in the foreground who is “illuminated” with pearls.

An essential concept of Pope Benedict is that the ecology of nature and the ecology of man share “the same destiny.”

“Care for creation must be one and the same with care for the ‘inviolability of human life in every one of its phases and every one of its conditions,’” Magister adds.

“Wherever hatred and violence break out, nature weeps as well. A devastated landscape and an uninhabitable city are the product of a humanity that has made a desert of its own soul,” his analysis at www.Chiesa concludes.