In an address to a group of scientists Monday at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope Francis called on world leaders to fully implement the Paris agreement.

Without directly mentioning Donald Trump, the pope criticized climate deniers for "the ease with which well-founded scientific opinion about the state of our planet is disregarded." He said, "The 'distraction' or delay in implementing global agreements on the environment shows that politics has become submissive to a technology and economy which seek profit above all else. The pope's comments come two weeks before the one-year anniversary of the Paris agreement and more than a year since he penned an encyclical on the issue.

"We are not custodians of a museum or of its major artifacts to be dusted each day, but rather co-operators in protecting and developing the life and biodiversity of the planet and of human life present there," Pope Francis said. Modern-day humans have "grown up thinking ourselves owners and masters of nature," with the right to destroy it "without any consideration of its hidden potential and laws of development, as if subjecting inanimate matter to our whims."

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Reuters, Crux, Catholic Philly, VOA News, Deutsche Welle

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