Pope’s Lenten Message Includes Environment Damage as ‘Wounds of Christ’, by Jeanne Smits

February 27, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has published his Lenten message for 2020, encouraging all Catholics continually to return to the “mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus,” “the cornerstone of our personal and communal Christian life.” While insisting in traditional terms on reconciliation with God and conversion in this “favorable season,” Pope Francis mostly spoke of the horizontal effects of the special Christian time of penance — which he did not mention — whose fruits he mainly named as “a means of personally participating in the building of a better world.” And, of course, of commitment to bettering the “environment.”

In particular, Francis spoke of the “wounds of the crucified Christ” as being “present in environmental disasters, the unequal distribution of the earth’s goods, human trafficking in all its forms, and the unbridled thirst for profit, which is a form of idolatry.”

There was no mention of man’s necessary atonement for sins, nor of the possibility of everlasting life with God obtained through the sacrifice of His only Son.

Pope Francis instead focused on the social aspect of the “paschal mystery.”

“Putting the paschal mystery at the center of our lives means feeling compassion towards the wounds of the crucified Christ present in the many innocent victims of wars, in attacks on life, from that of the unborn to that of the elderly, and various forms of violence,” he wrote.  ….

Read more here:  https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/popes-lenten-message-includes-environment-damage-as-wounds-of-christ