Healing a Broken World - Society of Jesus

Healing a Broken World
80 The Parliament of World Religions, held for the first time in Chicago in 1993 and
attended by some 8,000 people from all over the globe, issued a Global Ethics of
Cooperation of Religions on Human and Environmental Issues statement. The
subsequent Parliaments held in Capetown and Barcelona had the environment as a
major theme. The Parliament held in December 2009 in Melbourne also had a major
focus on the role of religions in contributing to a sustainable future. International
meetings on the environment such as the Global Forum of Spiritual and
Parliamentary Leaders have been held in Oxford (1988), Moscow (1990), Rio (1992),
and Kyoto (1993). The International Union for the Conservation organized the first
panel on ―Spirituality and Conservation‖ at the World Conservation Congress in
Barcelona in 2009.
81 Laurenti Magesa, ―African Spirituality and Environmental Conservation‖, in
Indigenous Voices in the Sustainability Discourse, ed. Frans Wijsen and Sylvia
Marcos (Berlin: LIT , 2010), 129.
82 The covenant states that nobody shall climb or cut trees there, it is the domain of
the ancestors, and people respect it.
83 They point to the graves where their ancestors are buried as a strong reminder of
their bond with the environment. Ancestral veneration serves as a connection to
creation and ultimately to God the Creator. For Kunda the environment is a medium
through which they commune with God and therefore spiritual life is not possible
without respect for their environment.
84 Ignacimuthu. Environmental Spirituality, The Bombay St. Paul Society, 2010
85 The resources of the world are not unlimited, whereas human beings‘ greed
knows neither limit nor discretion. Their unbridled voracious greed for pleasure and
acquisition of wealth has exploited nature to the point of near impoverishment.
According to the Sigalovada Sutta, a householder should accumulate wealth as a
bee collects pollen from a flower. The bee harms neither the fragrance nor the
beauty of the flower, but gathers the pollen to turn it into sweet honey.
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