Protecting the earth requires sharing clean technologies, says pope

Published: 2007-09-07

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Industrialized nations "must share clean technologies" with developing nations, as well as curb the demand for goods that damage the environment, Pope Benedict XVI said. Countries with emerging economies and undergoing rapid industrialization "are not morally free to repeat the past errors of others by recklessly continuing to damage the environment," the pope said in a written message to environmental and religious leaders meeting in Greenland. As such, "highly industrialized countries must share clean technologies and ensure that their own markets do not sustain demand for goods whose very production contributes to the proliferation of pollution," he said. The Sept. 1 message was addressed to Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, one of the sponsors of the seventh Religion, Science and the Environment symposium on the Arctic. The Vatican released a copy of the message to journalists Sept. 7. The Sept. 6-12 meeting in Ilulissat, Greenland, brought together religious leaders from numerous traditions to focus on the impact pollution and climate change have had on the island's rapidly melting glaciers.

Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .