QUITO, Ecuador (AP) β Pope Francis is challenging Latin America’s youth to take up his environmental protection campaign, saying the defense of God’s creation isn’t just a recommendation but a requirement.
Francis’ appeal, delivered at Quito’s Catholic University, is particularly relevant for Ecuador, a Pacific nation that is home to one of the world’s most species-diverse ecosystems in the Galapagos Islands and Amazon rain forest, but is also an OPEC country heavily dependent on oil extraction.
Francis told students and professors that God gave humanity the Earth not only to cultivate, but to care for β a message contained in his encyclical on the environment.
Francis began his last full day in Ecuador with an open-air Mass that drew more than 1 million people.
In his homily, Francis urged Latin Americans to channel the same urgency that brought them independence from Spain two centuries ago into spreading the faith on a continent where Catholicism is losing souls to evangelical movements.
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