Environment is key to all the world's major ills, says Francis

In his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations today Pope Francis connected the world’s major ills and evils to a failure of will and lack of measures to preserve and improve the natural environment.

Such measures on the part of all government leaders, he said, would put an end “to the phenomenon of social exclusion, with its baneful consequences: human trafficking, the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labour, including prostitution, the drug and weapons trade, terrorism and international organised crime”.

Similarly, he used an environmental argument to defend, by implication, traditional marriage and the rights of the unborn child.

“The defence of the environment and the fight against exclusion demand that we recognise a moral law written into human nature itself, one which includes “the natural difference between man and woman (cf Laudato si’ 155) and absolute respect for life in all its stages and dimensions.”

Because of the interconnectedness of all living things, Francis claimed there is a “right of the environment” first because human beings are part of it and second because every living creature “has an intrinsic value.”

At the start of the day the UN, for the first time, the flag of the Holy See was raised in front of the United Nations alongside those of the 193 official member states.

Francis became the fifth Pope to address the UN assembly (PA)

In his speech, Pope Francis also made forthright appeals against nuclear weapons, “military and political interventions”, and drug trafficking, “by its very nature accompanied by trafficking in persons”.

After his speech to the UN, Francis visited scarred and sacred ground in New York, holding an interfaith prayer service with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs and Hindus.

The Pope's prayerful visit, Imam Sayyid M. Syeed told Religion News Service, "is even more important for Muslims than it is for Catholics".

Francis then will meet with family members of victims killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Later on Friday, Francis will visit a school in the heavily Hispanic neighbourhood of East Harlem.

About 80,000 are expected to watch the procession as he makes his way to Mass at Madison Square Garden on Friday night. Nearly 20,000 are set to attend the service at the major sporting and concert arena.