Pope urges all to be 'stewards of creation'

Pope Francis. Photo / AP

Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change has been leaked to the world early by an Italian magazine - prompting the Vatican to condemn the "heinous" act and say the text is not the final version.

The document was due to be released on Friday but L'Espresso put a draft on its website yesterday.

In the Argentinian Pontiff's encyclical on environment, the draft opens by saying climate change is the Earth's way of protesting "irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God placed in her". The Pope urges all people to be stewards of creation and he addresses the human causes of climate change.

By making environmental protection a moral imperative, his intervention could spur the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to lobby policymakers on ecology issues.

According to a translation by the Guardian, the draft reads: "We have grown up thinking that we were her owners and dominators, authorised to loot her. The violence that exists in the human heart, wounded by sin, is also manifest in the symptoms of illness that we see in the Earth, the water, the air and in living things.'

While it points at other factors involved in climate change, the draft refers to scientific studies which indicate global warming in recent decades is because of the large concentration of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity.

It states access to clean drinking water is "an essential human right, fundamental and universal", while accusing those with more resources and greater economic power of "making the problems or hiding the symptoms" of climate change, the Huffington Post said.

The draft adds: "The attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers, range from negation of the problem, to indifference, to convenient resignation or blind faith in technical solutions.

"Today we cannot help but recognise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach, which must integrate justice in the discussions of the environment, to hear the cry of the earth as much as the cry of the poor."

- Daily Mail