2017-11-18 Vatican Radio

“Science, like any other human activity, has its limits which should be observed for the ‎good of ‎humanity itself, and requires a sense of ethical responsibility,” Pope Francis said on Saturday.

“The true measure of progress, as ‎Blessed ‎Paul VI recalled, is that which is aimed at the good of each man and the whole man,” the Pope told some 83 participants in the plenary assembly of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture. The participants met the Pope at the conclusion of their Nov.15-18 assembly which discussed the theme, “The Future of Humanity: New Challenges to Anthropology.”

You can listen to our report in the original article.

Incredible advances

The Pope said, the Church wants to give the correct direction to man at the dawn of a new era marked by incredible advances in medicine, genetics, neuroscience and “autonomous” machines. Speaking about the incredible advances in genetics, he noted that diseases that were considered incurable until recently have been eradicated, and new possibilities have opened up to “programme” human beings with certain “qualities”.

Not all the answers

The Pope said that “science and technology have helped us to further the boundaries of knowledge of nature, especially of the human being,” but they alone are not enough to give all the answers. ‎“Today,” he explained, “we ‎increasingly realize that it is necessary to draw from the treasures of wisdom of ‎religious ‎traditions, popular wisdom, literature and the arts that touch the depths of the mystery of ‎human ‎existence, without forgetting, but rather by rediscovering those contained in philosophy and ‎theology.‎”

Church teachings

In this regard, the Pope pointed to two principles of the Church’s teaching. The first is the “centrality of the human person, which is to be considered an end and not a means.” Man must be in harmony ‎with creation, not as a despot about God’s inheritance, but as a loving guardian of the work ‎of the Creator.‎

The second principle is the universal destination of goods, including that of ‎knowledge and technology. Scientific and technological progress, the Pope explained, should serve the good of all humanity, and ‎not just a few, and this will help avoid new inequalities in the future based on knowledge, and prevent widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. The Holy Father insisted that great decisions regarding the direction scientific research should take, and investment in it, should be taken together by the whole of society and should not be ‎dictated solely by market rules or by the interests of a few.‎

And finally, the Pope said, one must keep in mind that not everything that is technically possible or feasible is ethically acceptable.

Source from Vatican Radio: http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-calls-for-common-good-ethical-responsibility

By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, November 17, 2017

Pope Francis issued a strong message to negotiators at the COP23* climate talks in Bonn, Germany on Thursday, warning them not to fall into “four perverse attitudes” regarding the future of the planet—”denial, indifference, resignation and trust in inadequate solutions.”

Francis, who has long pressed for strong climate action and wrote his 2015 encyclical on the environment, renewed his “urgent call” for renewed dialogue “on how we are building the future of the planet.”

“We need an exchange that unites us all,” he said, “because the environmental challenge we are experiencing, and its human roots, regards us all, and affects us all.”

The pontiff also said he hopes the COP23 talks would be “inspired by the same collaborative and prophetic spirit” of COP21, which led to the landmark signing of the Paris agreement to avoid global temperature rise well below 2°C.

“The Agreement indicates a clear path of transition to a low- or zero-carbon model of economic development, encouraging solidarity and leveraging the strong links between combating climate change and poverty,” Francis said.

Although the pope did not call any countries out by name, the U.S. is the only country not in support of the Paris agreement due to President Donald Trump’s declared withdrawal from the pact. Syria and Nicaragua, which were the only other holdouts, recently joined the accord.

Trump, who notoriously said global warming is a hoax, has filled his administration with lawmakers who question the science of climate change or reject mankind’s role in causing the global issue.

Francis has spoken against global warming skeptics several times before. In September, during an in-flight press conference from Colombia to Rome, the pope said that those who reject climate science remind him of a psalm from the Old Testament about stubbornness.

“Man is stupid, the Bible said. It’s like that, when you don’t want to see, you don’t see,” he said as the papal plane flew near Caribbean islands pummeled by Hurricane Irma. His statement was not addressed to any political leader in particular.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration used its only public forum at COP23 to promote coal.

According to the Associated Press, the top American representative at the talks told other delegates that the U.S. is still committed to reducing greenhouse gas even though the Trump wants to exit the Paris accord.

Dozens of nations have joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, launched Thursday at the climate talks, to phase out the use of coal by 2030. The alliance involves more than 20 nations including Angola, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, Fiji, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Portugal and Switzerland, according to Reuters. The states of Oregon and Washington have also joined.

* – Note: COP23 is the 23rd “Congress of the Parties.”

Source: https://www.ecowatch.com/pope-francis-cop23-2510283678.html