The Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines called on government and business leaders to stop “destructive practices” and respond to the call to protect the environment.
In a statement on August 31, the country’s religious superiors said that after the pandemic “there can be no turning back” to the same human activities that greatly impacted biodiversity.
They said governments and businesses “must stop destructive practices such as the use of non-renewable energy, mining, logging that leads to deforestation, industrial farming and fishing, industrial production of foods and consumer goods that infringe on wildlife and the rights of nature.”
The religious leaders also called on governments to take “bolder steps to prevent wars” and urged nations to end “the nuclear arms race.”
They noted that the pandemic forced human beings to “minimize” activities and has “silenced big industries” that allowed the earth to “flourished.”
The religious group said the global health crisis has “also brought home in real terms the meaning of Pope Francis’ concepts of ‘Our Common Home’ and humanity as being a single family.”
The Church leaders said climate changed, which was “caused by human invasions on biodiversity,” has affected the “health of both the earth and human beings.”
“A sick world is a sick people,” read the AMRSP statement, adding that the coronavirus pandemic has spared no country.
The religious leaders, however, said the world “also gained a deeper understanding of global solidarity” to collectively address the threats of the climate crisis to the world’s public health.
With the poor and the vulnerable the “hardest hit” during natural disasters and pandemics, “there can be no turning back to what was perceived as normal,” they said.
The religious organization urged “each living person on this earth” to “listen” to the cry of nature and “change and evolve to non-consumerist lifestyles.”
“Evolve new forms of social economic and political systems that promote equality and just peace. Systems that protect the health of both the environment and the people,” the statement read.
Father Angel Cortez, AMRSP executive secretary, invited the faithful “to embrace a better normal” way of living.
He said the Season of Creation, which will start on September 1, “encourages us to perform personal ecological actions that could be the start of a bigger change that the earth needs.”
The Season of Creation is a liturgical memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi, patron of ecology, from September 1 to October 4.
The 2020 Season of Creation in the Philippines has been extended until October 11 in connection with the celebration of the annual Indigenous Peoples’ Sunday.
The Philippine Catholic Church is celebrating in 2020 the “Year of Ecumenism, Inter-religious Dialogue, and Indigenous Peoples.”
Source: Licas Philippines
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