COPENHAGEN (RNS/ENI) Bells pealed as a warning on climate change on Sunday (Dec. 13) as the Archbishop of Canterbury told a packed church service that humanity can only show love to all by making the earth a secure home.
Archbishop Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the 77 million-memberAnglican Communion, preached the main sermon before Danish royalty, Denmark’s prime minister and religious leaders at Copenhagen’s Lutheran cathedral.
“We cannot show the right kind of love for our fellow humans unless we also work at keeping the earth as a place that is a secure home for all people,” Williams said.
The service marked the midpoint of United Nations-organized talks to map out an agreement to limit carbon emissions that are believed to be the major factor behind global climate change.
“The deepest religious basis for our commitment to the environment in which God has placed us, is this recognition that we are called to be, and are enabled to be, the place where God’s love for the world comes through,” Williams said.
“We have to flesh out in our lives that fundamental biblical conviction that when God looks on the world he finds it good. We have to show in our lives some echo of the delight God finds in creation.”
The cathedral’s bells tolled 350 times, joined by other churches in Denmark, Scandinavia and across Europe. Churches worldwide had been invited to ring bells and other instruments 350 times at 3 p.m. local time in solidarity with the service in Copenhagen.
Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu enthralled thousands of people outside the cathedral by handing a petition for climate protection with 512,894 signatures to Yvo de Boer, the United Nations’ top climate official.
“Next week about 120 heads of states and governments are going to be here,” de Boer told the crowd of several thousand. “So, let your voices be heard.”
