Pope’s General Intention for February 2012

January 31, 2012: The General intention of Pope Benedict XVI for the month of February 2012: Access to Water. That all peoples may have access to water and other resources needed for daily life.
An estimated two-thirds of the earth’s surface is water. Yet lack of access to water kills more children annually than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined. The United Nations declared 2005 to 2015 as the “International Decade for Action: Water for Life.”
This month Pope Benedict XVI draws our attention the need to take care of this precious resource so that all people will have the water they need to live. The Pontiff maintains that access to water is part of every person’s right to life. In a message
for the 2007 World Water Day he wrote: “Water, a common good of the human family, constitutes an essential element for life. Access to water is in fact one of the
inalienable rights of every human being.” He repeated this message a year later saying that water is not “an economic commodity” and the right to water “is founded on the dignity of the human person.”
Water also has a profound religious significance. The Sacred Scriptures use water as a symbol of purification and of life. God, the Creator, uses water to sustain and clean all that lives.
We pray this month that the nations, communities, and people of the world will value God’s gift of water and use it in a way that makes it accessible to every one of our brothers and sisters in the human family.