Pope's message for 2010 World Peace Day will focus on environment

(July 30,2009):- Pope Benedict XVI will focus on the connection between protecting the environment and working for peace, in his message for World Peace Day in 2010. The theme the Pope has chosen for the Jan.1 celebration is:- "If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Safeguard Creation," the Vatican announced July 29. It said the pope intends to discuss the fact that in a globalized world, there is a strict connection between protecting the environment and promoting peace. “The use of resources, climate change, the application and use of biotechnologies and demographic growth," are all issues that can have repercussions across national borders for generations to come, the statement said.
The papal message will underline the fact that protecting the natural environment is a challenge all people must face together, recognizing they have an obligation to respect a gift God created for all. It said the Pope also wants to emphasize how the "current ecological crisis" is impacting the entire world and, therefore, requires international action to resolve the problem. All the nations and people together must preserve and restore the natural environment, eliminating at least some of the causes of environmental disasters, it added.
The Vatican statement also said Pope Benedict intends his World Peace Day message to be a further development of the four paragraphs on the environment included in his encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth"). In his encyclical, published in early July, Pope Benedict said, "The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it, we have a responsibility toward the poor,toward future generations and toward humanity as a whole."