Catholics Time to Fight for the Forest, Crusade agaisnt explotation fo the Amazon

“This is one of the greatest challenges of our time: to convert ourselves to a type of development that knows how to respect creation,” the pope said in unprepared remarks. “When I look at America, also my own homeland (South America), so many forests, all cut, that have become land … that can longer give life (sic). This is our sin, exploiting the Earth and not allowing her to her (sic) give us what she has within her.”

Francis, who hails from Argentina, is developing something of a reputation as a faith-based environmentalist. In addition to mentioning climate change in his inaugural papal mass, he told a massive crowd in Rome earlier this year that “if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us,” and is also working on a formal papal encyclical about the environment. And this isn’t the first time the pontiff has spoken up on behalf of the Amazon. When visiting Brazil in July of last year, Francis told a group of Brazilian bishops that the Amazon — which resides almost entirely within nations where Catholicism is the dominant religion — should not be “indiscriminately exploited, but rather made into a garden.”

“The Church’s presence in the Amazon Basin is not that of someone with bags packed and ready to leave after having exploited everything possible,” Francis told the bishops. “The Church has been present in the Amazon Basin from the beginning, in her missionaries, religious congregations, priests, laity and Bishops and she is still present and critical to the area’s future.”

Sister Dorothy Stang, a Catholic nun who is sometimes called the “Angel” or “Martyr” of the Amazon, spent more than 40 years advocating against the deforestation of the rainforest and calling attention to the plight of the region’s indigenous people. Tragically, her activism was effective enough to make enemies among ranchers and illegal loggers: Stang was reportedly approached by hired assassins while walking to a meeting with parishioners in February 2005. When asked if she had a weapon, she pulled out her Bible and extended blessings to the two gunmen before they shot her six times, killing her.