The causes of environmental problems are “of the moral order”, the Pope has told the Vatican’s diplomatic corps.

In his annual speech to the international ambassadors to the Holy See, Pope Benedict said such problems “must be faced within the framework of a great programme of education aimed at promoting an effective change of thinking and at creating new lifestyles”.

However, he added, while believers wished to take part in this, for this to be possible, the public role faith needed to be recognised.

“Sadly, in certain countries, mainly in the West, one increasingly encounters in political and cultural circles, as well in the media, scarce respect and at times hostility, if not scorn, directed towards religion and towards Christianity in particular,” the Pope said.

There was the risk, he warned of “viewing secularity solely in the sense of excluding or, more precisely, denying the social importance of religion”.

This approach, he added “creates confrontation and division, disturbs peace, harms human ecology and, by rejecting in principle approaches other than its own, finishes in a dead end”.

Welcoming the fact that the Lisbon Treaty “provides for the European Union to maintain an ‘open, transparent and regular dialogue’ with the Churches, he expressed the hope “that in building its future, Europe will always draw upon the wellsprings of its Christian identity”. 

He added that laws or proposals which “strike at the biological basis of the difference between men and women” could be a form of an attack on the environment. 

The problem of the environment was complex, the Pope said. 

“Creatures differ from one another and can be protected, or endangered, in different ways, as we know from daily experience,” he said.

Pope Benedict added: “One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes. I am thinking, for example, of certain countries in Europe or North and South America.”