“We only have a future if we understand that the protection of the integrity of creation does not only not comprise a hurdle for economic development, but is the vehicle for real progress,” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said on the occasion of this year’s Indiction Day (September 1st).
That’s according to orthodoxtimes.com.
In the Patriarchal Message, it is stressed that “respect for creation and the constant concern for its protection belongs to the core of our Orthodox identity as one of its most precious elements”, with the point that “The Church recognizes and teaches that the cause of human alienation from the “very good” creation and one’s fellow human beings is the “alienation from God.”
The Ecumenical Patriarch underlined that sustainable development is a one-way street, while he does not fail to refer to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“This year, the celebration of the Day of the protection of creation are accompanied by the sound of weapons in Ukraine, by the cry of the victims of military violence, the bombardment of cities and infrastructures, the groaning of nature and moaning of refugees. Every war is a humanitarian and ecological catastrophe. The ongoing violence, beyond the thousands of human lives, also destroys the natural environment that it pollutes, forcing nations and peoples to return to ways of securing energy efficiency through means that are unfriendly to the environment. Thus, humanity enters a new vicious cycle of destructive impasses, which confirm the saying that homo sapiens to this day continues to behave simultaneously as homo demens, as imprudent and irrational,” the Ecumenical Patriarch said.
It should be recalled that he cannot bless the Russian war on Ukraine as Russia’s Patriarch Cyril does.
