Pope Francis: Is Pandemic ‘Nature’s Revenge’ For Ignoring Climate?

Perhaps topping all other kooky ‘more progressive than thou’ statements of the past years, Pope Francis this week said something that sounds like he’s been quoted in an Onion or Babylon Bee headline, as if he’s in competition for hyperbolic absurdity with Greta Thunberg.

Instead it’s CNN, and it’s all too real — Francis actually implied in new statements on the coronavirus pandemic that it’s nature’s revenge for people ignoring climate change.

Pope Francis has said the coronavirus pandemic is one of “nature’s responses” to humans ignoring the current ecological crisis, CNN reports.

The remarks were cited in a Wednesday interview with The Tablet and Commonwealth magazines, wherein the pope further described the crisis as an opportunity for mankind to “slow down the rate of production and consumption”.

“We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods?” the Pope said.

“I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses,” he added, strongly suggesting that the ongoing deadly COVID-19 outbreak could be part of nature’s ‘response’ – given the pandemic was the focus of the interview.

“There is an expression in Spanish: ‘God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives,’” the pope said in an interview published Wednesday in The Tablet, a United Kingdom-based Catholic weekly.