In May this year Pope Francis issued the most astonishing document to come from the Holy See in centuries, an encyclical called ‘Laudato Si’. In this remarkable document, the Pope addresses every human being in the hope of beginning a revolution to preserve ‘our common home’ currently under threat from climate-change, a disregard for the poor and the dominance of ‘the market’. In perhaps the most striking sentence of the encyclical, Francis says ‘the Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth’. This is increasingly hard to deny and it is for that reason that I believe ‘Laudato Si’ has something to say to every human person, however uncomfortable the message is to receive.

Francis begins with the premise that there is a mutuality inherent in nature - we need nature, he says, and we need each other. Of course, he’s right in this and the world is increasingly waking up to the fact. However, he goes further than most in his conviction that there is a fully ‘integral ecology’ - protection of the environment or the most vulnerable are to facets of the same moral imperative; our flourishing is intimately related to the flourishing of others and of the earth.

From this premise, the Pope rightly goes on to attack the false and treacherous appetites of modern capitalism, arguing that the consumerist understanding of nature is fatal both to the planet and also to the poorest and most vulnerable members of the human race. He may understand the benefits of capitalism and advances in technology: who can deny, for example, the improvement to living conditions? But the Pope issues a stark reminder: technology gives to those with knowledge and economic resources “an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world”. Francis reminds us of how dangerous this concentration of power is. Living under this ‘technocratic paradigm’ dominates the economic and political life of our society, which means it is skewed in favour of those with money and knowledge. It is skewed in our favour, we cannot deny that we benefit from this skew, and so we often fail to recognise that, by itself, the market cannot guarantee human development or social inclusion. In the existing paradigm we are largely complicit in damaging not only ourselves but also our common home.

However, the reason I believe the Pope has something to say to all of us is because he does not only attack the excesses of the market, but he also breaks from the liberal, optimistic consensus of the consuming-world. He is emphatic in his belief that the capitalist system under which we live will not break the cycles of environmental degradation; no technology can fix the problem of unrestrained appetite which, Francis argues, dominates our culture. Francis invites us to dramatically ‘change direction’ - criticising the weak response of the majority of liberal-minded people who, like the majority of us in this country, live in a state of complacency and cheerful recklessness. Yet the Pope’s most scathing criticism is levied at what he calls the ‘ecological debt’ which we are accruing. In our world, the poor pay for the greed of the rich and future generations will pay for our indulgences now. There are inalienable rights and these are non-negotiable, yet at the moment these human needs are ignored so that the few can satisfy their insatiable appetites.

Whether you agree or disagree with Pope Francis, and people have ardently done both, we can’t ignore his message. The way the consuming-world lives is destroying the environment and degrading the lives of millions of people, not to mention the threats to the rest of nature and biodiversity. Francis is characteristically critical of the ineffective global response to this apocalyptic-crisis, highlighting the many international statements which have led to very little action. Pope Francis also calls individuals to reconsider their part in these systems which exist to satisfy our need to consume and to find a means of peace and fulfilment which does not exploit the world’s poorest and damage the ‘common home’ on which we all dependent. Of course, all this has an undeniable spiritual dimension for the Pope; the world is not, for him, the result of a random chain of events but the beloved creation of a loving Creator, who has bestowed on creation a dignity which ought not to be violated. The Holy Father’s final cry is simple: we must abandon the self-centred consumerism which has led us here, in order to stop the degradation of our fellow human and the whole created world.

All I can say is amen; let it be so.