Pope Francis said this Saturday that “the earth is on fire” and asked thousands of young people to question the current model of economic development, in order to guarantee environmental sustainability, reports the Efe agency.
Francis’ appeal was made this morning during a conference held in the Italian city of Assisi, in the center of the country, which brought together a thousand young economists and businessmen.
“There are many people, companies and institutions that are carrying out an ecological reconversion. We must move forward on this path and do even more. Just putting on makeup is not enough. You have to question the development model,” she said. the Pope, emphasizing that “the earth burns today and that it must be today that we must change it”.
The conference, entitled “Francis’ economy”, started from the Pope’s idea of carrying out a process of inclusive dialogue and transition towards a new “fairer” economic model.
After hearing numerous testimonies from some young people, Francis called for unity, stressing that only this will allow “great things to be done”, including “change a huge and complex system such as the world economy”.
The Vatican head of state also referred to “the inability of the world to protect the planet and peace”, defending the need to transform an “economy that kills” into one that “gives life”, proposing a new vision of the environment and of the earth.
“If we talk about ecological transition, it makes no sense to remain within a 20th-century economic paradigm that stole natural resources and the land,” the pope said.
“It is time to abandon fossil energy sources, to accelerate the development of sources of zero or positive impact,” he said.
In his speech, Francis also defended the need to “improve social relations, especially in the West, where these “are increasingly fragile and fragmented by consumerism.”
Thus, he launched the challenge of putting “poverty at the center of a new economy that must look at the world from the perspective of the most fragile.”
Source: TSF
