"The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth... The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet's capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes." From his first papal encyclical, a letter to the church, which was dedicated to the environment and published on June 18, 2015.
"A selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged," comments to the United Nations in September 2015
"The ecological crisis and the large-scale destruction of biodiversity can threaten the very existence of the human species." Also to the United Nations in September 2015.
"God gave us a bountiful garden, but we have turned it into a polluted wasteland of debris, desolation and filth ... Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis. The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact," Sept. 1, 2016, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.
"War is madness," the pope said on Sept. 13, 2014, referring to violence seen around the globe.
"Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion," he said during a visit to Ur, Iraq in March 2021.
"Today, however, we reaffirm our conviction that fraternity is more durable than fratricide, that hope is more powerful than hatred, that peace more powerful than war," he said during a visit to Mosul, Iraq in March 2021.
"In Ukraine, rivers of blood and tears are flowing. This is not just a military operation but a war which sows death, destruction and misery," he said his weekly address on March 6, 2022, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on Feb. 24, 2022.
"Once more humanity is threatened by a perverse abuse of power and partisan interests which condemns defenseless people to suffer every form of brutal violence," he said on March 18, 2022.
"It is also true that the Russians thought it would all be over in a week. But they miscalculated. They encountered a brave people, a people who are struggling to survive and who have a history of struggle," he told a Jesuit journal in June 2022.
"Every day, I carry in my heart dear and martyred Ukraine, which continues to be flagellated by barbarous attacks," he said in June 2022.
"Generally, the cruelest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryati and so on. Certainly, the one who invades is the Russian state. This is very clear," he told a Jesuit magazine in November 2022.
"(The war in Ukraine) is an enormous suffering, enormous. A defeat for humanity," he said on Dec. 8, 2022.
REUTERS