When a loved one is involved in an accident and that person is in critical condition, we become concerned about that person. We also gather together the other family members and we entrust that person into the hands of God and the saints. We do everything possible to save that individual.
Today, our common home, our planet, is at great risk. A risk that effects first of all the planetary biosphere, secondly, it effects the poor and thirdly, it effects each one of us.
The Amazon forest, located in the heart of Abya Yala (the southern part of the American continent), is burning. These fires are consuming the flora and the fauna … many of which are found only in this region of the universe.
There are many causes behind these fires. Climate change has raised the temperatures throughout the world and prolonged the dry season. As a result, these fires cannot be controlled in a natural way, that is, controlled by rainfall which is proper to this area which possesses many unique climatic characteristics that control many aspects of life in this part of the world. This also effects the people who live in the communities in this zone: simple people, poor people who speak in their own dialect (many of which of unknown to linguists and anthropologists). This area is composed of people from many different cultures and clans who are seeing their way of life threatened. Many of these people have had to flee this region and many others have died in these fires.
Climate change is not, however, the only cause of these fires. Blame must also be placed on the large mining companies that exploit the natural resources that are found in this region. Until recently these companies have been protected by agreements among various nations, especially Peru and Brazil (in which countries are located the great majority of these lands) … Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname have also entered into similar agreements. We also mention here the large landowners (who want to appropriate much of the existing land in this region in order to increase their land for pasture) and the drug-traffickers (who want to increase the production of the coca lea and thereby achieve greater alkaloid production which will later become the coveted drug that is exported to the countries of Europe and the United States).
At the same time, however, each one of us also shares a responsibility in this matter. Day by day, our modern lifestyle (which is more modern than life giving) is destroying the planet: our unbridled consumerism, the need to possess the latest technological “gadgets”, luxury automobiles, airplane travel in order to save time (which time we then have no idea how to spend), our need to have and to have and to have … (“I want” and “I need” are very common everyday expressions). In our oceans we have created islands of garbage. We are involved in irrational exploitation of our natural resources and produce an incredible amount of food that the first world countries do not want.
What explanation will we give to our aboriginal brothers and sisters who are being deprived of their simple lifestyle? What explanation will we give to those men and women who hunt only to eat, who need the vegetation for their food, their clothing and their houses? We have not only deprived these men and women of their way of life, but we have also deprived them of their happiness.
How will we respond to our students when they see photographs of the fauna and the animals of the Amazon on their iPhones and laptop computers … all of which are extinct because of human deprivation?
Laudao Sí has been written but I believe that many people have not read this document, and even fewer have preached about this document. Pope Francis has extended an invitation to everyone, a heart-rending plea to become ever more concerned about our planet. But we have either not heard that plea or we have not taken it seriously. We continue to destroy the Amazon region, the Mato Grosso Plateau in Brazil and the forests in the Congo. We continue to destroy the seas and their natural resources with the presence of our “factory ships”. We continue to consume with the sole desire to own and to possess. We continue to destroy the land as we extract the natural resources from the earth and direct the flow of water for that purpose (thus leaving thousands of small farmers and herders without the necessary means of subsistence for themselves and for the members of their community).
The dialogue between Abraham and the rich man is being fulfilled: Father Abraham, have pity on us and send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they too come to this place of torment … Abraham responded: they have Moses and the prophets. If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead (Luke 16:27-31). We have the Scriptures, the teaching of the church, Laudato Sí … and yet our ecological sin moves us forward toward the destruction of our land, the destruction of the only common home that we have.
By:Alexandro Fabres, CM
Province of Chile
Translated:
Charles T. Plock, CM
Eastern Province, USA
