Pope Francis is one of those pontiffs, who particularly emphasize the importance of caring for the nature and related issues. He has made a point of his intentions to be insistive and sequent in his actions, trying to persuade world’s leaders of the necessity to make efforts aimed at decreasing the amount of green house gas emissions. He over and over returns to this subject and, among other things once underlined, that the nature, unlike God, never forgives, and once humans give it a slap, they can be certain to receive one back. But he is not only appealing to fear, so to speak. He also speaks of our duty before the coming generations. Among other things. Taryn Salinas of National Geographic quotes Pope Francis saying: “”We received this world as an inheritance from past generations, but also as a loan from future generations, to whom we will have to return it!”—Remarks, meeting with political, business and community leaders, Quito, Ecuador, July 7, 2015” (Salinas, ND).
Pope also says, that we owe our care for this world, for the nature to God, to the great creator, who created it all with love and care or us, thus once we d not make attempts to preserve the beauty of the nature, this shows our disrespect to God, and this particularly refers to Christians.This shows how religious authority can help make a very strong influence upon the world’s leaders in the things, which are very practical. The spiritual leader through religious rhetoric explains to those, who are willing to hear the word of the church, how important it is to care for the nature. There are many people, who believe in God, many of those, who want to hear the word of church. In fact, the number of Americans, as an example, who believe that church leaders should speak more on political issues, has increased recently. Thus the voice of Pope matters a lot and can make quite some change. This, probably, also refers to the voices of other religious leaders.
Researches have shown, that even those people, who do not belong to any church themselves are ready to listen in to the opinions of the religious leaders, in fact, they seek to hear them. Thus, it is expected of Pope, that he will express his view of these problems. And when he does, he is trusted and not only by Catholics. This refers even to more politically loaded issues, such as immigration. Pope Francis is a great supporter of immigrants. Among other things, he is known to have encouraged them to not be ever ashamed. Moreover, with all his authority he frequently calls the leaders of the world to support immigrants, help them in every possible way. And these calls make their intended influence. The thing is that even those of the leaders, who would not care for what Pope has got to say, are still forced to listen in. They cannot really afford acting against the word of the Pope. Because this would be disapproved by the public, and thus their popularity as leaders will significantly drop and that isn’t only among the Christians.
Thus, as it has been shown above, The Pope possesses great tools of influence upon political and business leaders of the world, and he actively exploits this influence in the issues of migration and climate change prevention. He supports immigrants and makes other leaders do so as well. He speaks against the irresponsible attitude to the nature, and manages to make a change in this field as well.
- Salinas, Taryn. “Nature Never Forgives: 7 of Pope Francis’s Greenest Quotes” National Geographic. September 20, 2015. Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/120150920-pope-francis-environment-climate-quotes/
