Praise be to you

Pope Francis has used the Latin translation ’Laudato si’, as the title to his latest encyclical on the care of the environment.

In this Pope Francis appeals to everyone to consider how their actions have affected everything and everyone on planet Earth, with increasing climate change, pollution and species extinction; the richer bearing the greater responsibility. Pope Francis while acknowledging the good from the human creativity of scientists in areas like food production also considers the need to support small scale farming, which feeds the greater part of the world’s people, protecting their lands and employment.

The increase in technology has given us increasing power, particularly in the hands of those with the economic resources to use it.

Whilst technology has remedied countless evils, it has also lead to a ‘rise in relativism, which sees everything as irrelevant unless it serves one’s own immediate interests’; people become mere objects for forced labour, children are sexually exploited and the disabled and elderly abandoned as no longer of use.

The Assisted Suicide Bill is to be debated in Parliament in September. A change in the law will increase the pressure on vulnerable people, including the elderly and disabled, to end their own lives for fear of being financial or emotional burdens. Does St Albans have sufficient places in affordable care homes and suitably adapted properties for the vulnerable, elderly and disabled?

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