Molloy hosts talk on 2015 papal encyclical

Last week, Molloy College welcomed Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, who gave a talk focusing on Pope Francis’s encyclical about the environment.

The talk, titled Catholics, Capitalism, and Climate, was the 12th Joe and Peggy Maher Leadership Forum at Molloy. Turkson spoke after introductions from Molloy President Dr. Drew Bogner and Bishop William Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre. After Turkson’s address, a panel of local experts discussed the pope’s encyclical, how climate change affects the poor and what it means for Catholics.

“One of the aims of the Holy Father, as stated in this document, is ‘to entrust to social groups the task of helping people’s awareness of human and natural ecology,’” Murphy said. “What better place for this to occur than here at Molloy College, where we are gathered today? This college, founded by the Dominican Sisters of Amityville, has become a center for the study of issues of critical importance and the exchange of ideas among all the major institutions — political, social, economic and religious — across Long Island.”

Turkson came to speak about the pope’s encyclical “Laudato Si’,” or “On Care for Our Common Home.” It was a widely read document that Francis published last year about climate change and how it will affect the poor.

Turkson grew up in Ghana in the 1950s, and became a priest in 1975. In 1992 he was named archbishop of Cape Coast in Ghana.

As president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Turkson was one of the people who helped the pope write the encyclical, so he had an intimate knowledge of it. He walked the audience through the document and what it means, and cleared up misconceptions about its aims.

“The pope has not written an encyclical on climate change,” Turkson said. “He has written a social encyclical. An encyclical which is meant to analyze the social conditions of the people and the state of the earth.”

Turkson said that, in the pope’s view, there is nothing wrong with capitalism. It can even be a good force. “God created trees. He didn’t create furniture,” said Turkson. “It is the businessman that turns the tree of creation into furniture.”