Diocesan News

Only in Print: New Sin: According To Pope Francis, Recycle and Repent | January 18, 2020

At St. Francis College in Downtown Brooklyn, students and faculty are trying to “go green.” St. Francis of Assisi was the patron saint of ecology. (Photo: Allyson Escobar)

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — A new version of the three Rs is “reduce, reuse and recycle.”

And, actually, failure to do those things may constitute a sin in the future. That’s because in November, Pope Francis announced the possibility of adding “ecological sins” to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It would make acts and habits that harm the environment — such as polluting, using plastics only once, destroying forests or failing to recycle — an official sin.

Reactions online have been mixed, with some Catholics being sarcastic, others supportive and some frightened…


The rest of this article can be found exclusively in the Jan. 18 printed version of The Tablet. You can buy it at church for $1, or you can receive future editions of the paper in your mailbox at a discounted rate by subscribing here. Thank you for supporting Catholic journalism.