Pope Francis has singled out gluttony as possibly the most serious sin of all, citing its destructive impact on the planet. The Catholic leader said that while there is nothing wrong with enjoying meals, humans have developed an habit of immoderation when it comes to food.
The Pope has previously warned that the world as we know it is “collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point” amid rapidly accelerating climate change and inaction by global leaders. Last October, he named developed Western nations as the main culprits behind the crisis.
Speaking during his weekly General Audience on Wednesday, the Pontiff argued that from a social viewpoint, gluttony is “perhaps the most dangerous vice that is killing the planet.” He denounced the “voracity with which we have been lashing out, for the past few centuries, at the planet’s goods.”
Having increasingly adopted a predatory attitude to food and resources in the broader sense of the word, humans have “abjured the name of men” to instead become “consumers,” Pope Francis claimed.
He observed that a growing number of people appear to have an imbalanced relationship with food, which manifests in eating disorders. According to the Pope, these disorders are “mostly related to the torments of the psyche and soul.”
“Food is the manifestation of something inner: the predisposition to balance or immoderation… the empathy of those who know how to share food with the needy, or the selfishness of those who hoard everything for themselves,” he said.
In his Apostolic Exhortation in October, the Catholic leader wrote that the consequences of climate change in the form of “extreme weather phenomena” are becoming increasingly harder to ignore.
He went on to dismiss the notion that poorer nations bear the lion’s share of responsibility for global warming, pointing out that “emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries.”
The Pope also lamented an apparent lack of interest in tackling the situation on the part of major economic powers.