The Vatican is sounding a strong drumbeat on climate change ahead of the release of the environmental encyclical, with
Pope Francis calling out "the powerful of the Earth" for their "lack of willingness to share" food resources with the poor. Meanwhile, one of the Pope's closest advisors, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga,
hit back at deniers who have been criticizing the Pope's environmental efforts. Cardinal Maradiaga accurately blamed deniers' rejection of environmental concerns on self-interest, saying, "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."
The Cardinal called the criticism over the encyclical "absurd" in light of the fact that it hasn't even been published yet. This is a not-so-subtle dig at the Heartland Institute, which sent a small group of deniers to the Vatican last month in an attempt to convert the Pope to climate denial.
While yes, it is certainly absurd to criticize something no one's seen, it's not a surprising move from Heartland. And to their credit, at least they haven't (yet) put up a billboardconnecting the Pope and the Unabomber. But the outspoken nature of both the Pope and his top adviser suggests that they're not going to simply turn the other cheek when it comes to these profit-protection motivated attacks against the Vatican's faith-based environmental concerns. Nor should they.
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