By Juliet Eilperin June 26
ABOARD THE SHIP MORE SPACIOUS THAN THE HEAVENS — Off the island of Spetses, the leader of 300 million Christians worldwide told a group of nearly 200 religious leaders, academics and activists that they needed to move beyond intellectualism when it came to the environment.
“What remains for us is to preach what we practice,” said Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. “Now we must begin the long and difficult way from the mind to the heart . . . May God guide you in your service to his people and the care of his creation.”
The environment has defined 78-year-old Bartholomew’s tenure for more than a quarter-century: The gathering at sea this month was the ninth he has organized since the mid-1990s. This one focused on Attica, the peninsula surrounding Athens that juts out into the Aegean Sea, and Bartholomew brought together scientists and clergy to examine the state of bodies of water including the Danube and Amazon rivers, the Baltic and Adriatic seas, and the Arctic Ocean.
In November 1997, he had delivered an address in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he officially classified crimes against the natural world as sins.
“For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation; for humans to degrade the integrity of Earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the Earth of its natural forests, or destroying its wetlands; for humans to injure other humans with disease, for humans to contaminate the Earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life, with poisonous substances,” he told a crowd that included then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. “These are sins.”
Pope Francis has likewise drawn global attention to environmental activism: On the same day Bartholomew was concluding his conference in Greece, the pope brought the leaders of multinational energy and investment firms to the Vatican to discuss the path forward on climate change.
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