I am not making this up.
This is not The Onion. Neither is this Eye of the Tiber.
From Breitbart:
Pope Francis: Coronavirus Pandemic Is Nature ‘Throwing a Tantrum’
ROME — Pope Francis told a Spanish journalist Sunday that nature never forgives and the coronavirus pandemic is nature’s cry for humans to take better care of creation.
Asked by a Spanish journalist via Skype whether the COVID-19 pandemic is nature’s way of taking “revenge” on humanity, the pontiff suggested that nature is calling for attention.
“There’s a saying, which you have heard: ‘God always forgives. We sometimes forgive. Nature never forgives,’” the pope said. “Fires, earthquakes … nature is throwing a tantrum so that we will take care of her.”
The pope was also asked whether he is “optimistic” about the future of humanity in dealing with the coronavirus.
“I don’t like that word, because optimism sounds like makeup to me,” Francis replied. “I have hope in humanity, in men and women, I have hope in nations. [… God…] I’m very hopeful. People who are going to draw lessons from this crisis to rethink their lives.”
“We are going to come out of this better… fewer, of course. Many are left along the way and it’s hard. But I have faith: we will come through this better.”
[…]
By the way… it is in itself interesting that Francis was on Skype.
Nature doesn’t forgive because nature isn’t a self-aware rational being.
But wait! Maybe it isn’t wrong to ascribe these feelings of revenge, etc. to nature. Right?
We read in the CCC…
400 The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man. Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay”. Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will “return to the ground”, for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.”
Okay, that seems like an endorsement of nature as a sentient force. But, instead, it isn’t
Nature isn’t a person. Nature isn’t a runaway AI which has evolved.
I remind the readership that globalists and population control fanatics are all over the Vatican these days. Under Francis, people like Paul Erlich and Jeffrey Sachs are invited.
I picked up from my friend @BreeDail that Francis uttered these thoughts in the wake of the same thing from the infamous ex-priest Leonardo Boff, of Marxist Liberation Theology fame. HERE Boff wrote:
We are capable of foolish and demented conduct; from now on you can fear everything, everything, including the annihilation of the human race; it would be the right price for our follies and our cruelties
[…]
Not without reason James Lovelock, the formulator of the theory of the Earth as a self-regulating living superorganism, Gaia, wrote a book “ The revenge of Gaia ” (Intrinsic, 2006). I estimate that current diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, zica virus, sars, ebola, measles, the current coronavirus and the generalized degradation in human relationships, marked by profound inequality / social injustice and the lack of minimal solidarity are a reprisal of Gaia for the offenses that we inflict continuously on you.
[…]
Want some Gaia? Here’s some Gaia.
In October a wooden statuette of an earth/mother/goddess (read: demon) was venerated in the Vatican Garden and then a bowl dedicated to the worship of that demon was put, at the order of Francis, on the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica above the bones of the first Vicar of Christ. In April, there will be no worship of God for the Triduum and Easter in Rome’s Cathedral St. John Lateran and in St. Peter’s.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
Fr.Z: thank you for the sanity and the logic!
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“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
The man who governs the Catholic church … who dresses in white … who is brightened by a Jesuit education … who has attained an incredible height of power in the years of his priesthood … does not understand the simple truth that God created the world. Out of nothing. He has made the world (nature he calls it) appear to be separate from God. “God always forgives. We sometimes forgive. Nature never forgives…..nature is throwing a tantrum so that we will take better care of her.” Francis l. My Catholic ears are burning from listening to this drivel. We do not have to listen to this, my Catholic friends! This man is messing with our heads! This is only one example …….
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So catching a disease from a bat is nature’s way of punishing us for global warming? If that was a logical fallacy at least it would have some connection with logic. The Holy Father’s rants unfortunately do not. A Catholic friend compared him to an alcoholic father. As Pope he is what he is our Holy Father but he is also quite an embarrassment.
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A friend alerted me to Francis’ interview with well known journalist, Jordi Évole, on TV here in Spain, so my husband and I tuned in. We just couldn’t believe the babyish babel coming from the mouth of one who is, supposedly, the Vicar of Christ. It was an absolute embarrassment!
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Kathleen: yes, it is sad that our pontiff can not adequately articulate our Faith. What should be second nature of our tenets is secular rationalism.
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The image of nature as vengeful makes me uneasy too, but because it is too simplistic a conception of nature, I think. I’d prefer to say that the larger world is animate in all sorts of ways and on all sorts of levels, though on larger levels it may not have intentions, etc. in the way that we do (perhaps it has other, more wonderful, flows). Anyway it is certainly complex and interconnected! But it also makes me uneasy when people who are so sure of their theology, like some of the commentators here, are also very uninformed about basic ecology and contemporary environmental conditions. Perhaps this interview with science writer David Quammen might help:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/spillover-warning-how-we-can-prevent-the-next-pandemic-david-quammen.
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