No Virginia Pope Francis didn't say that the China virus was due to climate change

A lot of people were shocked when Pope Francis didn't back the ordination of married men recently.

That's in part due to the #FakeNews media constantly distorting what the Pope says.

Here are a few American Thinker articles that address previous occasions where the #FakeNews media have distorted what the Pope has said.

·     They said the Pope didn't believe in Hell; but he does. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/yes_virginia_the_pope_does_believe_in_hell.html

·     They said that the Pope said that Trump wasn't a Christian: but in fact he didn't. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/02/the_real_pope_francis_vs_the_msm_pope.html

·     They said that the Pope equated denying people entry to the US with murder; but he didn't. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/the_pope_on_immigration_the_real_story.html

The most recent example is the media claiming that Pope Francis said that COVID19 is nature's response to climate change.

The problem is that that's not what the Pope said.  Here's the question and the Pope's response:

I was curious to know if the pope saw the crisis and the economic devastation it is wreaking as a chance for an ecological conversion, for reassessing priorities and lifestyles. I asked him concretely whether it was possible that we might see in the future an economy that—to use his words—was more “human” and less “liquid.”

Pope Francis: There is an expression in Spanish: “God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives.” We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that eighteen months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods? I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses.

The Pope is clearly saying that the coronavirus crisis may be an opportunity to reform the economy in ways he believes are good but he in no way said that the virus was the result of us not attacking climate change vigorously enough.

The alleged responses of nature he listed-- Australia fires, glaciers melting, flooding-- don't include the China Virus.

Now he's wrong about those things being due to human caused climate change but that's very different than him declaring that the virus is a direct result of mankind's actions.

Hence what the Pope was saying was that the virus gives us an opportunity and perhaps an incentive to address "problems" he feels we have been ignoring not that the virus was caused by our inaction.

The take away is simple. Never trust anything that the media says about the Pope if it seems odd until you read what Pope Francis actually said.