Pope Francis: Destroying The Rainforest Is A Sin
“This is one of the greatest challenges of our time: to convert ourselves to a type of development that knows how to respect creation,” Pope Francis said.
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CREDIT: Catholic Church of England and Wales
Pope Francis spoke out against the destruction of the rainforest this past weekend, calling deforestation a “sin” and asking his fellow Catholics to respect God’s Creation.
Speaking at the University of Molise on Saturday, July 5, before an audience that included struggling farmers, Francis decried the destruction of South America’s rainforests such as the Amazon, which contains an estimated 390 billion individual trees but had the highest deforestation rate in the world as of 2005.
“This is one of the greatest challenges of our time: to convert ourselves to a type of development that knows how to respect creation,” the pope said in unprepared remarks. “When I look at America, also my own homeland (South America), so many forests, all cut, that have become land … that can longer give life (sic). This is our sin, exploiting the Earth and not allowing her to her (sic) give us what she has within her.”
Francis, who hails from Argentina, is developing something of a reputation as a faith-based environmentalist. In addition to mentioning climate change in his inaugural papal mass, he told a massive crowd in Rome earlier this year that “if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us,” and is also working on a formal papal encyclical about the environment. And this isn’t the first time the pontiff has spoken up on behalf of the Amazon. When visiting Brazil in July of last year, Francis told a group of Brazilian bishops that the Amazon — which resides almost entirely within nations where Catholicism is the dominant religion — should not be “indiscriminately exploited, but rather made into a garden.”
“The Church’s presence in the Amazon Basin is not that of someone with bags packed and ready to leave after having exploited everything possible,” Francis told the bishops. “The Church has been present in the Amazon Basin from the beginning, in her missionaries, religious congregations, priests, laity and Bishops and she is still present and critical to the area’s future.”
The pope’s message is part of a rich history of Catholic activism to protect South American rainforests. Sister Dorothy Stang, a Catholic nun who is sometimes called the “Angel” or “Martyr” of the Amazon, spent more than 40 years advocating against the deforestation of the rainforest and calling attention to the plight of the region’s indigenous people. Tragically, her activism was effective enough to make enemies among ranchers and illegal loggers: Stang was reportedly approached by hired assassins while walking to a meeting with parishioners in February 2005. When asked if she had a weapon, she pulled out her Bible and extended blessings to the two gunmen before they shot her six times, killing her.
Similarly, when prominent business owners and loggers tried to revamp Brazil’s “Forest Code” to allow for increased deforestation of the Amazon in 2011, the Brazilian Catholic Church lobbied president Dilma Rousseff to veto the bill, and circulated a petition among its 12,000 parishes opposing the reforms. Two other institutions of the church — the Pastoral Land Commission and Catholic “base” communities — have also long been the champions of the Amazon’s indigenous people, whose lives and land are often violently exploited by wealthy ranchers and land speculators. The church groups work to provide locals with lawyers to represent them and frequently report to the government whenever violence is used to forcibly stifle their voice.
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Appeals Court Blocks Arizona Driver’s License Ban For DREAMers
This is another blow to Arizona’s anti-immigrant agenda.
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Gov. Jan Brewer
CREDIT: AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
An appeals court has blocked Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R) move to prevent some undocumented immigrants in her state from obtaining driver’s licenses. The ruling will allow undocumented immigrants who came here as children and qualified for Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to obtain driver’s licenses in Arizona, at least while the court hears arguments and issues a final ruling on the constitutionality of a driver’s license ban.
After Obama initiated the DACA program to give some undocumented immigrants who came here as children temporarily legal presence, Brewer countered with her own executive order that prohibited those DACA beneficiaries from obtaining driver’s licenses, saying “the Obama amnesty plan doesn’t make them legally here” even though they have the same work authorization papers that allow other noncitizens to qualify for driver’s licenses.
In Monday’s ruling, the unanimous panel sided with the DACA plaintiffs suing Brewer, finding they were “likely to suffer irreparable harm” and unequal treatment by the state. The ruling temporarily blocks Brewer’s driver’s license ban until the court issues a final ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit judges reasoned that DACA recipients are “similarly situated” to noncitizens, who are allowed to obtain licenses using their employment authorization documents (EADs). DACA recipients have similar documents and the majority found no rational basis for why “Employment Authorization Documents held by noncitizens demonstrate federally authorized presence, while DACA recipients’ Employment Authorization Documents do not” since the federal government has in both cases “pledged not to remove them during the designated period, and has authorized them to work in this country.”
One of the appeals court judges who joined in the majority opinion was Judge Morgan Christen, who has the rare distinction of receiving judicial appointments from both former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and President Barack Obama. Christen was appointed in 2009 by Palin to sit on the Alaska Supreme Court before being appointed to the federal appeals court. Christen “agreed that plaintiffs demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their equal protection claim.”
Previously in May 2013, U.S. District Judge David Campbell ruled that Arizona’s policy was likely discriminatory, but rejected the argument that Brewer’s policy was unconstitutional.
Erika Andiola, a prominent DACA recipient from the Dream Action Coalition said in a statement Monday, “In Arizona, it can mean the difference between driving to school and work with no fear and being stopped and deported for having no license.”
Studies show that giving driver’s licenses to unlicensed drivers, a category that includes many undocumented immigrants, would improve public safety because drivers would have to pass a test before they obtain a license and will need to purchase auto insurance.
While the ruling temporarily lifts the driver’s license ban for DACA recipients in Arizona, it will not affect a ban for other undocumented immigrants in Arizona.
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