Vatican City, Mar 8, 2019 / 10:25 am
Pope Francis said Friday that global development goals need to be supported by ethical objectives stemming from personal conversion and recognition of one's failures.
"The economic and political objectives must be supported by ethical objectives, which presuppose a change of attitude, the Bible would say a change of heart," the pope said March 8 at the Vatican's Clementine Hall.
"Already St. John Paul II spoke about the need to 'encourage and sustain an ecological conversion,'" he said, referencing a 2001 catechesis of one of his predecessors. "Religions have a key role to play here."
Francis emphasized that "for a correct transition to a sustainable future, it is necessary to recognize 'one's own mistakes, sins, vices or negligence,' 'to repent of heart, to change from within,' to be reconciled with others, with creation and with the Creator," as he wrote in his 2015 encyclical on the environment, Laudato si'.