Does Pope Francis want to expand official Catholic teaching? Apparently he is considering including "sins against the environment" as a separate offense in it. Accordingly, he expressed himself before jurists. He took them to task at the same time.
The head of the church made the comments at a meeting with the International Association for Criminal Justice at the Vatican on Friday. At the same time, the pope called before jurists for consistent punishment of corporations and entities for environmental pollution. Literally, he spoke of an "ecocide".
Francis accused the judiciary of ignoring "the crimes of the most powerful, especially the major crimes of corporations". He blamed the "organized crime" of global finance for the over-indebtedness of states and for "the plundering of the natural resources of our planet". The pope also condemned speculation with government debt instruments, which does not take into account the consequences for entire economies.
These were "offenses that have the gravity of crimes against humanity," Francis said. He justified this by accepting hunger, poverty, forced migration and death from preventable diseases, as well as environmental disasters and the extinction of indigenous peoples.
The International Association of Criminal Law (Association Internationale de Droit Penal, AIDP) will hold its 22. international congress in Rome. His theme is "Criminal Law and Business".
Pope sees Nazi "culture of hate" returning
Further, Pope Francis has expressed concern about a newly burgeoning "culture of hate" like that of Nazism. When he hears the statements of some government officials, "Hitler's speeches of 1934 and 1936 come to mind," the head of the church said at the Vatican. Francis referred to the Nazi persecutions "of Jews, Sinti and Roma, people with homosexual orientation".
The culture of social segregation, which he often deplores, is developing into a "culture of hate" under the influence of other phenomena of the affluent society, according to the Pope. In it a "social unease of young people as well as of adults" comes to the outbreak. These are "unfortunately not isolated episodes," Francis said.