UPDATE: Yes, he speaks of loving and respecting creation. Don’t be scandalized.
Pope Francis’ experience, you have to know, would put respect for love of God and neighbor together with respect and love of creation, not that he’s a pantheist! Honestly!
For instance, you have this rich guy, but he’s filthy rich, meaning that he’s gotten his money by kicking the poor in the face, hard, to death. He’s got this nasty chemical factory on the edge of the city, employing people, sure, but at slave rates, and dumping deadly toxic waste into their open street sewers, that they walk through and live in in their poor neighborhoods, their barrios, their favelas, having them watch the toxic environment kill them off. But God created our environment to help us praise Him (see Romans Chapter One). Creation screams out to us that God exists, that He loves us, that He has done all things well for our benefit, out of love for us, and that we might use creation in a way that helps us to demonstrate that we love our neighbor. But we don’t do that often, do we?
Care for the environment is care for our neighbor. It is diabolical arrogance to kill off the poor just to save a few bucks in disposing of waste properly. Just a for instance.
I have a great deal to say about Saint Francis’ ideas about creation, ideas which slammed him down prostrate before our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whereby creation simply follows the will of God, while we, with our fallen human nature, do not, so that creation is incriminating us of our stupidity, so that creation is calling us to repent of our stupidity, so that creation trumps our stupidity by insisting that we praise God, creation being in anguish until the redemption of the sons of man, of Adam, fallen Adam, as Saint Paul has it. But that’s a post for another day.
Sure, Marxists and pro-aborts speak up the environment over against people, so that we ought to wipe out populations and abort everyone for the sake of the environment, but that doesn’t mean that those who want to protect the environment can’t do so out of love of neighbor, and out of a healthy praise of God.
Something like that. Saint Francis knew how to do this. So does Pope Francis.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
I love this man and I love the Bishop of Rome. My tears, my loyality, my fidelity are his as they are the Lords. May all in the Church unnite behind Pope Francis…
Just beautiful, just beautiful!!
My reaction is exactly as Cathy’s. The Church is in good hands. Thank you, God.
Wonderful, truly. I sort of wonder what he meant with the part about our relationship with God’s creation. I hope he’s not talking about something like global warming. But I am so grateful for this new Pope – I think the Lord has been very good to His Church.
With his focus on the poor, I hope he expands that to include not only the mtaerially, or temporally, poor, but those who are poor for lack of knowing the one true God.
Jenna: His experience, you have to know, would put the two together in the sense that you see one guy who own a chemical factory on the edge of the city, employing people at slave rates, dumping deadly toxic waste into their open street sewers, that they walk through and live in in their poor neighborhoods, having them watch the toxic environment kill them off. God created our environment to help us praise Him (see Romans Chapter One).
Care for the environment is care for our neighbor. It is diabolical arrogance to kill off the poor just to save a few bucks in disposing of waste properly.
Sure, Marxists and pro-aborts speak up the environment over against people, but that doesn’t mean that those who want to protect the environment can’t do so out of love of neighbor.
Something like that.
@2:40 I wonder which word Pope Francis said, Creatore (Creator) or creato (created)? He didn’t sound to me like he used the word creazione (creation) as subtitled in the video, but my Italian is bad and grammar worse.
I guess he was referring to creation per the VIS English translation:
“the man who love and safeguards Creation. In this moment when our relationship with Creation is not so good—right?”
http://www.vis.va/vissolr/index.php?vi=all&dl=972a762b-d571-9636-c2f9-51446f134e7c&dl_t=text/xml&dl_a=y&ul=1&ev=1
Yes, Dismas. Let me put up an explanation of that.
I want to like him. I love him. I still do not know enough about him to feel a confidence in his orthodoxy on doctrine and morals and have read some things about him as Archbishop of Buenos Aires that relate to that and trouble me very deeply. And I feel some fear that he will decide his convictions about the poor lead him to want to do a big dispersal sale of all the vestments and art and so forth “to help the poor” and so we can be a “poor Church”. These are fears. But there is nothing yet that puts the fears to rest, the liturgical changes are unsettling but what I really wonder is whether there is underlying heterodoxy behind the eschewing of symbols of the Papacy and the preference to refer to himself as Bishop of Rome (as if only), and of beauty and a splendor which is actually about Christ the King and His Bride? Did the Cardinals who gave him two-thirds really know all they needed to know about him? Or is he really a very holy man of sound and profound orthodoxy, sound will to reform what needs reformed, and all this is to draw and invite, to image Christ? This I pray Pope Francis may be for us. May the peace he stands for not be a false irenicism contrary to true ecumenism and our belief in objective truth, objective good, objective beauty, and contrary to the hermeneutic of continuity. I believe in the Holy Spirit and that Christ is head of the Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.
Elizabeth: Quo vadis?
okay, let me put it this way, if it makes sense, I will be AWFULLY happy with Pope Francis if he isn’t too good to be true
As much as I loved (and still love) Benedict, I am just totally enthused about Francis! The Holy Spirit was obviously speaking to our cardinals and they obviously were listening very hard. I love this new pope! Every little bit of video of him speaking is a treasure, and I hope to hear and see a lot more as soon as possible.
Feel free to delete this comment and never let it see the light of day, Father. I just needed to vent a bit.
Fr. George, about a week ago you posted that you felt that Benedict must have been given a ‘glimpse’ by God of who would be the next pope, and that it would be a saint. In my semi-worthless opinion, you were right. When I see and hear Francis, I think not only of St. Francis of Assisi, but also of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Some of her spirit has been poured into this man, I think.
The ‘traditionalists’ who are criticizing him remind me not only of the pharisees in Jesus time, but also of fundamentalists. I grew up in a fundamentalist protestant church, so I know fundamentalism when I see/hear it. It is repugnant to me! And sad to say, the small amount of exposure I’ve had to the Latin Mass crowd locally has left me with a sour taste in my mouth because they are the living breathing definition of stuffy, rule-bound, sanctimonious fundamentalists! And now these are the very people turning up their noses at Pope Francis! They should be ashamed of themselves.
(ok I’ll quit now, since I’ve said more than enough already).
Janet
Your just fine, Janet. I would only add that, of course, we can’t generalize. Indeed, the TLM was the only Roman Mass celebrated for for very many centuries. There were sinners and saints and heretics who attended that Mass. There were those who were sloppy and those who were regal. And so on. Same, of course, with the Ordinary Form!
Even Protestants love Saint Francis. I think that the pope took his name is a very good sign.
That video was wonderful to watch, thank you Father. It fills me with hope and joy. The first thing I have begun to really learn about it my years of formation as a Secular Carmelite is what it really means to be spiritually poor. Clue: the presence or lack of material wealth has very little to do with it. Our good Pope must know this also, light years better than I. With just these few words, he has brought me right along on board! I long, with him, for a poor Church! Sign me up! LOL
I’ve seen quite a bit about “fear” in the comboxes I’ve been following (don’t worry, avoiding The Blog That Shall Not Be Named both out of obedience to my husband and sheer common sense). This nameless, anxious fear that people are speaking of is from the devil. I think it’s important to call that out for what it is is. True Love casts out all fear (this nameless, anxious feeling that arises in moments of panic), so when I feel it rising in me, I think it’s helpful to turn away from it, internally, and make acts of Faith, Hope, Love, Obedience, etc. It’s probably also helpful to turn away from it EXternally by avoiding all the sites that are feeding the fear. As Fr. Byers and others keep reminding us, even if the worst, most pessimistic rumors turn out to be true (unlikely), he is still our Pope, gloriously reigning! His authority comes from God our Creator and Savior. We submit out of love. The fruits of such submission can only be good for the Church.
Interesting point, Flos Carmeli: Just to say, the Demon Pan is known for spreading, you guessed it, panic, say, in animals, like the swine that drowned themselves, or people. Yikes!