ACERRA, Italy: Pope Leo on Saturday called out companies who seek \u201cdizzying\u201d profits at the cost of environmental pollution, on a visit to an area in Italy known as a hotbed for illegal dumping of toxic waste.<\/p>\n
On a visit to Acerra, about 220km south of Rome, the first US pope urged the world to \u201creject temptations of power and enrichment linked to practices that pollute the land, water, air, and social coexistence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leo said he wanted to come \u200cto the \u200carea near Naples known as the \u201cLand of Fires,\u201d where \u200cthe \u2060European Court of \u2060Human Rights ruled last year that authorities had failed to protect residents from waste dumping since at least 1988, to \u201cgather the tears\u201d of families who had lost loves ones to related illnesses.<\/p>\n
Arriving by popemobile in an outside square on a sunny spring day, Leo was greeted by people waving small yellow and white Vatican flags and wearing yellow hats, some holding up posterboards with pictures of \u2060family members who had died.<\/p>\n
Leo, who in recent \u200cmonths has been speaking more forcefully and will \u200cissue his first major document on Monday, said \u201cunscrupulous people and organizations have \u200cbeen allowed to act with impunity for too long.\u201d During his four-hour \u200cvisit to Acerra, he also referred to \u201cthe dizzying profits of a few, blind to the needs of people, their work and their future.\u201d He also met with victims.<\/p>\n
For years, collection, treatment and disposal of garbage in southern Italy was largely in the hands \u200cof a small group of private owners, with contracts sometimes tied to the Camorra, a mafia group based around \u2060Naples.<\/p>\n
In January \u20602025 the European court found that Italian authorities had repeatedly failed to act to stop illegal dumping in a region also known as the \u201cTriangle of Death,\u201d due to abnormally high rates of cancer for local residents.<\/p>\n
The court gave the Italian government two years to establish a comprehensive database of toxic waste sites and communicate the risks to the public.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in February 2025 appointed an Italian general to head a task force aimed at helping victims and pursuing environmental clean-up.<\/p>\n
Leo will issue his first encyclical, a major text, to the world\u2019s 1.4 billion Catholics, on Monday. It is expected to address the rise of AI and how the technology is being used in warfare and challenging workers\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ACERRA, Italy: Pope Leo on Saturday called out companies who seek \u201cdizzying\u201d profits at the cost of environmental pollution, on a visit to an area in Italy known as a hotbed for illegal dumping of toxic waste. On a visit to Acerra, about 220km south of Rome, the first US pope urged the world to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":98192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98193,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98176\/revisions\/98193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}