Cardinal Turkson on long term impact of Laudato Si’
(Vatican Radio) Almost a year on from its publication, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, on the care for our common home, has had an important impact at local and international levels.
That’s according to the head of the Pontifical Justice and Peace Council, Cardinal Peter Turkson, who was taking part in a panel discussion in the Vatican on Monday about U.S. and Holy See engagement on issues of common concern.
The encyclical, signed by the Pope on May 24th 2015, explores the interconnected concerns of caring for the human life and protecting the environment, appealing for action based on an interior ecological conversion.
Over the past year, Cardinal Turkson, whose Council worked on the drawing up of the document, has been travelling widely, speaking about its relevance to many other areas of financial, social and environmental policy.
He says Laudato Si’ has had a significant impact in highlighting the effects of human activity on our environment…
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Cardinal Turkson recalls that right after the publication of the encyclical the UN organised an event to explore what kind of moral support it could lend to the process of combatting climate change.
One month later, he says, the French president, François Hollande opened a conference called Consciences for Climate, quoting widely from the document.
The cardinal says he has spoken since then at many U.S. universities and colleges, highlighting local needs and concerns, such as the impact of rising sea levels off the Florida coast. Climate related disasters, he says, are increasingly “making it difficult for people to live wholesome and peaceful lives” and it’s important to ask “to what extent are people contributing to that”.
Speaking of his own experience growing up in mining town in Ghana, Cardinal Turkson describes the effect that surface mining has on the local environment: “the forest has gone, the topsoil is gone, agriculture is affected, the water board is affected – that’s a drastic change caused by human activity.
Similarly, he continues, the African agricultural practice known as ‘slash and burn’ creates “a lot of savannah in place of forests”. These examples, he says, show how human activity “can induce, worsen or even provoke” climate change.