The Pope has gone Green.
Seriously, I heard it on the Colbert Report but I found the story here: http://www.cathnews.com/news/705/160.php
More:
Going green: Vatican expands mission to saving planet, not just souls(Catholic News, 26/5/07)
Benedict identifies environment as key challenge(CathNews, 4/5/07)
Well, that’s good. I’m glad to see Vader is implementing environmentally-friendly policies throughout the Galactic Empire.
Seriously, thumbs up for the guy.
I love the Buddy Christ, he lives few towns over from me. 
I was doing a bit more reading and I was pretty astounded by this:
[QUOTE=Pope Benedict ]
“The first concerns the environment and sustainable development,” he said.
Knowing that the world’s resources are limited, what we need is the “capacity to assess and forecast, to monitor the dynamics of environmental change and sustainable growth, and to draw up and apply solutions at an international level,” the pope said.
“Particular attention must be paid to the fact that the poorest countries are likely to pay the heaviest price for ecological deterioration,” he added.
“In meeting the challenges of environmental protection and sustainable development, we are called to promote and ‘safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic “human ecology”’. This in turn calls for a responsible relationship not only with creation but also with our neighbours, near and far, in space and time, and with the Creator.”
[/QUOTE]
Interesting mix of the spiritual and real world concerns. Is there anything in his background where I should have expected him to make these changes and statements? I really though he was just an old Holy Bureaucrat that was mainly concern with Church History.
Nope, he’s not just a powerless paper-shuffler. I skimmed the wiki on it and it’s actually very well-written.
Wait, which wiki? I would like to read it. Or do you mean the Pope’s wiki article?
Yeah, Pope - Wikipedia
I keep seeing this title and hearing, “Brought to you by…thhheeee Space Pope!” from Futurama.
While I wouldn’t have predicted him going that far so quickly (and as a Protestant - not Evangelical fundie! - I’ve never belonged into the “We are Pope!” camp), but Ratzinger is from Germany, which has a strong solar-assisting program by the government, and in Bavaria, where’s he from, lots of solar panels have grown onto rooftops in the last decades (we get 8 to 9 hrs. of sunshine daily! If only it were also nice and warm…)
He’s also, at the same time, a terribly conservative and anti-intellectual guy - after all, he was head of the re-named Inquisition for decades before becoming Pope, so he’s even more concerned than John Paul II with staying conservative and traditional.
In his speech he gave at the University of Regensburg last (?) year, he showed his anti-scientific stand, trying to bring faith and religion where they don’t belong.
Also, the Catholic Church has been far more concerned about the enviroment and living today in the last 30 years or so than the Evangelical fundies in the US, who only wait for the Rapture and Acropalypse and don’t care if the planet goes to hell* in the meantime. The Catholics want to live on this planet for the future, so it needs to able to support human life (and with condoms and birth control forbidden, more humans will need supporting by Earth than before).
