Church leaders on World Environment Day
4 June 2009
In a message for World Environment Day, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has stressed that “the care for and protection of Creation constitutes the responsibility of everyone on an individual and collective level.”
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is widely recognized as spiritual leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox.
In a similar message, Archbishop Hieronymos II, who leads the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece, said: “It is God’s real blessing that people today, though they live in an era of secularization and materialism, have become aware that our Planet is our ‘Oikos’, that is our ‘Home’, which we have to protect and preserve, each and all of us with all our existing forces”.
As “the natural environment is part of Creation and is characterized by sacredness,” Patriarch Bartholomew said, “its abuse and destruction is a sacrilegious and sinful act, revealing prideful despise toward the work of God the Creator.”
The patriarch pointed especially to the treat posed by climate change: “The ecological crisis, and particularly the reality of climate change, constitutes the greatest threat for every form of life in our world.”
World Environment Day, commemorated each year on 5 June, is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.
Patriarch Bartholomew’s staunch support for international environmental causes has been an inspiration for churches at large and the WCC, which has been working to raise awareness on climate change for more than 20 years.
Full text of Patriarch Bartholomew’s message here
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