Pope Francis offered $1m charity donation to go vegan for Lent

Source: The Guardian

Pope Francis offered $1m charity donation to go vegan for Lent

Campaign targets pope because of his environmental leadership and influence over 1.2bn Catholics

Damian Carrington Environment editor
Wed 6 Feb 2019 05.00 GMT

Environmental campaigners have issued a challenge to Pope Francis: go vegan for Lent and receive $1m for the charity of his choice.

The purpose of the Million Dollar Vegan campaign, led by 12-year-old Genesis Butler, is to encourage people to eat less meat and dairy in order to fight climate change. Global warming cannot be beaten without huge cuts in meat eating in rich nations, research shows, while reducing consumption of animal products also tackles pollution and the destruction of forests and wildlife.

The Pope, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, has been outspoken on environmental issues. “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic [and] political,” he said in his 2015 encyclical. He also told the UN in the same year: “The ecological crisis, and the large-scale destruction of biodiversity, can threaten the very existence of the human species.”

Butler, from Long Beach, California, has been vegan since the age of six and has staged many protests against animal cruelty. She said there were many reasons for eating a plant-based diet.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/06/pope-francis-offered-1m-charity-donation-to-go-vegan-for-lent

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Source: Genesis for Animals

GENESIS’S LETTER TO POPE FRANCIS

This letter was published in The New York Times (US), The Guardian (UK) and national newspapers in 13 other countries on February 6th and 7th 2019.

YOUR HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS

As we approach the period of Lent – a season of reflection and hope – I write to you today with the utmost respect and appreciation for your speaking out on climate change, habitat loss, and pollution, and for reminding the world that Earth is a home we all share.

In your encyclical letter, Laudato si’, you stated that every effort to protect and improve our world will involve changes in lifestyle, production, and consumption. I agree with all my heart and seek your support in tackling one of the largest underlying causes of the problems we face: animal agriculture.

The current eating habits of predominantly richer nations are causing global destruction and devastation. Animal farming uses 83 percent of agricultural land but yields just 18 percent of our calories. With 815 million people suffering from malnutrition, imagine how many hungry people we could feed across the world if we moved away from such wasteful foods.

Not only does animal farming impact on the world’s poorest, it contributes 14.5 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. It is also a leading cause of deforestation and the current mass extinction of wildlife. Agricultural chemicals and animal waste are polluting our rivers, while overfishing and runoff are destroying our oceans.

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Read more: https://www.milliondollarvegan.com/genesis-letter-to-pope-francis/