Pope Francis has a theory about the coronavirus: that it’s the Earth’s vengeance for climate change.
Yep, you read that right. Hundreds of thousands are sick and millions more are suffering economic calamity because we didn't care enough about our carbon footprint.
Francis, whose own health was of concern last month when he was quarantined after becoming ill with what turned out to be bronchitis, said in an interview published Wednesday that the deadly virus, as well as recent earthquakes around the world and the deadly brushfires in Australia, are “nature’s responses” to ecological “catastrophes” that humanity has allegedly ignored.
“We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods?" the Pope told British Catholic journalist Austen Ivereigh for The Tablet and Commonwealth magazines.
“I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses,” he said, adding that in the wake of the coronavirus shutdown, “I believe we have to slow down our rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world."
The Pope also criticized “the hypocrisy of certain political personalities who speak of facing up to the crisis, of the problem of hunger in the world, but who in the meantime manufacture weapons.”