Saint Francis: Modern Environmentalism

Many people are familiar with the well beloved Saint Francis. He is most well known for his care and love of animals and nature. However, people use this as a way to prove that he was an environmentalist in the modern sense of the term. They say he is one who tried to strike a movement against the brutalities and injustices of animals. The truth is, Saint Francis was a man who loved God’s creation and cared for it as well as he could. Saint Francis, however, is not a modern environmentalist, but exemplifies what it truly means to care and cultivate the creation which God has made.

An environmentalist in the modern sense is one who strikes political and ethical movements for the protection of the environment. They have become extreme over the last few years and have been boiled down to “simply a fashion statement” (Ben Acheson, Modern Environmentalism- ‘People Would Rather Believe Than Know’, www.huffingtonpost.com, Politics) . People feel that green is the new “it” thing and that it is good. Green is actually “ not a technical or scientific term. We don’t measure anything on a scale of green-ness” ( Ben Acheson, Modern Environmentalism- ‘People Would Rather Believe Than Know, www.huffingtonpost.com, Politics). People are not becoming environmentally
Saint Francis is a great example of what an environmentalist ought to be and is one in the true sense of the word. Saint Francis is not an environmentalist in the modern sense of starting political movements or because it was popular. Saint Francis was an environmentalist in that he saw and came to know God better through creation and that all of God’s creatures need to be cared for as through rejecting them, people reject God. This is why he was canonized as the patron saint of ecology by Saint Pope John Paul