Pope Francis urges environmental progress to end 'predatory' attitudes

May 25 (UPI) -- Pope Francis announced a push on Tuesday to get Catholic institutions, including families, to become environmentally sustainable in less than a decade.

The pope launched the "Laudato si' Action Platform" during a video message from the Vatican.

The platform is named for Francis' 2015 book and urges a call to address environmental pollution and climate change.

In the video, Francis lamented humans' "predatory attitude" for causing environmental damage and said the world must protect the Earth for "future generations."

As part of the platform, he urged Catholic institutions like businesses, schools and families to become environmentally sustainable within seven years.

"What world do we want to leave to our children and our young?" the pope said. "Our selfishness, our indifference and our irresponsible ways are threatening the future of our children."

He called the push "a seven-year journey that will see our communities committed in different ways to becoming totally sustainable, in the spirit of integral ecology."

Francis emphasized the need to "embark on this journey together" and protect the impoverished from environmental crises.

"The current pandemic has now brought to light in an even stronger way the cry of nature and that of the poor who suffer most the consequences, highlighting that everything is interconnected and interdependent and that our health is not separated from the health of the environment in which we live.

"A new ecological approach [is needed to] transform our way of dwelling the world, our styles of life, our relationship with the resources of the Earth and, in general, our way of looking at humanity and of living life."