Cardinal Rodríguez criticises opponents of Francis’s forthcoming document on climate change and the environment
Pope Francis’s closest adviser has criticised “movements in the United States” hostile to the pontiff’s forthcoming document on the environment, saying the criticism was caused by capitalism protecting its interests.
Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the co-ordinator of a group of nine cardinals that serves as Francis’s Council of Cardinals, said: “The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits.”
He said both the Church and the wider world are awaiting Francis’s encyclical “with hope,” as it came alongside a UN-sponsored agreement on Sustainable Development Goals and a UN summit on climate change in Paris later this year. But he added that when he was in the United States recently he had heard criticisms of the encyclical, even though it has not been published.
Cardinal Maradiaga said the Council of Cardinals was not directly involved in drafting the document, but the Pope had told them that the encyclical was taking an ethical, not a scientific approach to the issue.
The cardinal was speaking at a press conference in Rome to mark the beginning of a Caritas Internationalis general assembly.
Also at the event Dominican Fr Gustavo Gutierrez, often called the “father of liberation theology”, said that his work is “a love letter to God, to the Church and to my people”.