Bishop Toohey’s Vatican Visit

The Vatican hosted a seminar on climate change earlier this year. Bishop Chris Toohey, who comes to Clifton Cathedral on Saturday, September 29 to help launch Sound of Many Waters, was one of the key speakers.

The Clifton Diocese website reported Bishop Toohey’s talk like this.

Mary Colwell the well-known environmental campaigner from Clifton Cathedral introduces the speech Bishop Chris Toohey from Australia made at a recent Vatican conference on climate change.

The Vatican recently held its first climate change conference. Eminent speakers from around the world gathered to give their thoughts on what is now considered by many to be the greatest crisis facing humanity today.

If the world carries on using fossil fuels and consuming resources at present levels life will be unsustainable for millions, particularly in developing countries. The severity and over-whelming consequences of a rapidly changing climate means this cannot be ignored by the world's religions.

It is not purely a political, scientific or social issue; it is definitely a moral one which needs to be urgently addressed.

One of the speakers was Bishop Chris Toohey from Australia, the leader of Catholic Earthcare, a Catholic environmental organisation which was set up in response to Pop John Paul II's call for a worldwide "ecological conversion".

Bishop Toohey was asked to give his experience of leading Earthcare and to express his views on how faith can contribute to the environmental movement. The text of the speech is downloadable below, it is a wonderfully clear and passionate plea for Catholics worldwide to take this issue to heart and make it part of everyday Catholic living. If this can happen we may be able to contribute enormously to reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also help change people's hearts to adopt a more sustainable (and sacred) way of life - an essential process for long term success.

Mary Colwell