Humanity does not own God's gift of creation and has no right to pillage it, Pope Francis said. "We are not custodians of a museum and its masterpieces that we have to dust off every morning, but rather collaborators in the conservation and development of the existence and biodiversity of the planet and human life," he said Nov. 28. The pope addressed experts attending a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Nov. 25-29 to discuss the impact of scientific knowledge and technology on people and the planet.

People in the modern world have grown up "thinking we are the owners and masters of nature, authorized to plunder it without any consideration for its secret potential and evolutionary laws, as if it were an inert substance at our disposal, causing, among other things, a very serious loss of biodiversity," he said.