In his encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (2015), Pope Francis gives us “A Prayer for Our Earth” and “A Christian Prayer in Union With Creation”.  Both prayers urge us to reflect on our relationship with God’s creation and transform how we interact with the environment.  

Through our reckless treatment of the planet given to us by God, we have caused the environmental crisis that now threatens life on Earth for people, animals and ecosystems.  Much has been written about the climate crisis and the threat to biodiversity.  In this note, however, the focus is on the implications of the Holy Father’s two prayers for how we treat animals  – especially the “livestock” and other animals we kill in vast numbers to eat.  (Annually, more than 80 billion land animals and innumerable quantities of marine animals are killed viciously for human consumption.)  

In “A Prayer for Our Earth”, Pope Francis writes: “All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures. Pour out upon us the power of your love, that we may protect life and beauty. Bring healing to our lives that we may protect the world and not prey on it. Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to recognise that we are profoundly united with every creature.”

In “A Christian Prayer in Union With Creation”, His Holiness writes: “Father, we praise you with all your creatures. Today, you are alive in every creature in your risen glory. God of love, show us our place in this world as channels of your love for all the creatures of this earth, for not one of them is forgotten in your sight. Enlighten those who possess power and money that they may avoid the sin of indifference. O Lord, help us to protect all life, to prepare for the coming of your Kingdom of justice, peace, love and beauty.”

If we take these words seriously, how can we countenance the cruelty perpetrated against animals by the meat, dairy and egg industries?  Referring to the “industrial use of creatures”, Pope Benedict XVI questioned factory farms’ treatment of animals, saying, “This degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”

The brutality inflicted on God’s creatures at factory farms and abattoirs is so horrific that we instinctively recoil from visualising it.  We would not want our children to see it – which demonstrates that we know how barbaric, lacking in empathy, and incompatible with God’s Kingdom of justice, peace, love and beauty it is.

Should we not have the honesty to acknowledge that the cruelty characterising the factory farm industry and slaughtering of animals to eat is immoral, inconsistent with the values encapsulated in Pope Francis’s two prayers, and possibly sinful?  Let us not be indifferent to that which Pope Francis cautions against in his prayers and not be accomplices to this heartless and inhumane treatment of God’s creatures.

Recently, Dr Jane Kotzmann wrote the following in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies: “To transition towards a world in which human beings can live in harmony with other animals and the environment with which we are interdependent, deep cultural change is required.  

Human beings must learn to recognise the intrinsic value of other animals and the environment.”  Profound moral and spiritual change is required.  Let us heed Pope Francis’ exhortations in these two prayers.