The Pope should have said something a long time ago that elephants were being killed for their ivory to make Catholic figurines and statutes. According to Christianity, man was to take care of the animals and plantlife, as well as, being our brother's keepers. Shame on the Catholic church, once again
WWJD: Why Are Elephants Dying for Religion?
The Catholic Church has publically condemned the use of ivory for religious figurines.
This Jesus figurine is made of elephant ivory. (DeAgostini Library/Getty Images)
Figurines and statues have been a part of Christianity since its inception, but should we be killing animals to make them? Sadly, religion figures heavily in the demand for ivory, something Noah probably didn't have in mind when he marched those animals onto the ark.
Despite the efforts of multiple organizations and governments throughout the world, the killing of elephants for their tusks continues at an alarming rate. Just last week, Kenyan authorities seized two tons of illegal elephant ivory at the Kenyan port of Mombasa that was bound for Indonesia. And earlier this month, custom agents in Hong Kong discovered 779 elephant tusks hidden in the false bottoms of shipping crates from Kenya, which represented at least 389 elephant deaths.
Last September, Oliver Payne, a National Geographic journalist, decided to tackle the lust for tusk from a different angle—the God angle. According to Payne, "The religious use of ivory is among the least publicized and seemingly most easily correctable drivers of the massive elephant slaughter now taking place across Africa."
Payne wrote to Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican’s press office, to see if “the Vatican would take a leadership role regarding the use of ivory by Catholics.”
Contacted for comment, Father Lombardi sent TakePart a lengthy letter dated January 22 that was addressed to "Oliver Payne and friends of the elephants." It stated, in part, that “regarding animals, the position of the Catholic has always been that, even if these certainly do not have the same level of dignity and thus of rights as human beings, they are living beings and of a higher perfection than plant life, especially those more evolved animals that are capable of relationships and sensations, of feeling pleasure and pain, for which they merit respectful treatment. They cannot be arbitrarily killed or made to suffer.”
He also noted that in his experience the Church has not encouraged the use of ivory for devotional objects. “We all know that there are ivory objects of religious significance, mostly ancient, because ivory was considered a beautiful and valuable material. There has never, however, been encouragement on the part of the Church to use ivory instead of any other material.”
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