7 Deadly Sins

The 8th deadly sin

Audio 48:30

Air pollution.

Getty Images/iStockphoto - mbaysan

By: Anne Dorval

1 min

It was in the 13th century, during the Lateran Council, that the Catholic Church set the list of deadly sins recorded by Saint-Thomas Aquinas at seven.

This list will not change for centuries, and it was only on March 10, 2008 that the Vatican decided to revamp it.

Advertising

Monsignor Girotti, then regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, announces the addition of new sins including pollution or any damage to the environment, genetic manipulation, economic injustices which widen the gap between the poor and the rich, pedophilia and drug use.

The Vatican also slips in, unsurprisingly, abortion.

This new list creates little resonance and will not mark the Catholic collective imagination.

In this last episode of

, we try to flush out the most manifest sin of our time.

Souls are probed in order to decree an eighth capital sin.

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• Culture

• Religion

• Company

• Pollution

• Environment

• Science landmarks

• Vatican

On the same subject

Pollution responsible for 10% of cancers in Europe, according to a public study

Great report

Heatwave in India: the survival of the poorest threatened by global warming

Report France

Pedophilia in the Church: what to do with the works of Father Ribes?