Vatican’s Irish adviser calls for Synod

IRISH priest Fr Sean McDonagh, who advised the Vatican on the first draft of ‘Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’s ground-breaking encyclical on the environment, has called for a Synod in the Irish Church to educate people about its contents.

According to Fr McDonagh, Pope Francis’s document marks a “huge change” in the Vatican’s approach to the environment. Speaking to the Irish

Independent, the ecotheologian said: “It is a new departure in the sense that it is the first document that talks about the magnitude of ecological crisis and the urgency of dealing with it; it is also the first document that marries science and religion; and it is moving these issues from the Church’s periphery into the centre.”

The encyclical is seen as a major intervention by the Pope.

Fr McDonagh said ‘Laudato Si’ was asking for “enormous changes” and doing it “ecumenically” as it paid tribute to the campaigning of Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin welcomed the encyclical, calling it “very strong”.

He said: “We all live here together and we recognise the particular responsibility that we as human beings have, not to look after just ourselves but to look after the harmony of everything.”

The Pope also touched on the subject of abortion.

He admonishes those who show “more zeal” for “protecting other species than in defending the dignity which all human beings share in equal measure.”

The Pope states it is “clearly inconsistent” to combat the trafficking of endangered species while remaining indifferent toward the trafficking of persons, and the destruction of “another human being deemed unwanted” through abortion, embryonic experimentation and population control.