Pope Compares Politicians’ Hate Speeches to Hitler’s, Embraces “Ecological Sin”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Pope Francis compared politicians who engage in hate speech against Jews, Gypsies, and LGBT people to Adolf Hitler. “I confess that when I hear certain statements from law enforcement or government officials, Hitler’s statements in 1934 and 1936 come to my mind,” he told lawyers in the Vatican on Friday, November 15th.

“These are actions typical of Nazism which, with its persecution against Jews, gypsies, and people of homosexual orientation, represents the negative model of the rejection and hatred culture”, said the Pope.

In the audience, the Pope also voiced his concern over the use of Nazi symbols in Europe. “It is no coincidence that in these times there is a resurgence of the typical symbols of Nazism,” he said. He had already voiced concern over anti-Semitism in a speech on Wednesday.

“Today, the habit of persecuting Jews is being reborn. Brothers and sisters: this is neither humane nor Christian, and the Jews are our brothers and sisters and cannot be persecuted. Do you understand?”

Ecological sin

Almost two weeks after the closing of the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, Pope Francis said that he intends to officially include the concept of “ecological sin” in the doctrine of the Church. At the hearing, he said that “we are thinking of introducing sin against ecology into the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The Catechism is the book that summarizes all the thinking and doctrine of the Church, particularly in matters of faith and morals. The insertion of this type of sin into the Catechism means that the idea is no longer a personal vision of Francis but is officially taught by the Church.

The concept of “ecological sin” was defined in the final document of the Synod, approved on October 26th, as an “action or omission against God, against one’s neighbor, the community and the environment” and the call to converting and caring for the “common home”, that is, planet Earth.

The final text was voted by 181 participants entitled to vote, the so-called “Synod Fathers”. During the vote on the document, all the paragraphs received a two-thirds majority of approval.

“We propose to define ecological sin as an action or omission against God, against one’s neighbor, the community and the environment. It is a sin against future generations and manifests itself in acts and habits of contamination and destruction of environmental harmony, transgressions against the principles of interdependence and the breaking of the networks of solidarity between creatures and against the virtue of justice”. – Final Document of the Amazon Synod.

Source: G1

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