“The Earth is Mine, saith the Lord…”



There wasn’t much green about the Catholic school I went to as a kid. It was mostly black and white. There were nuns and priests in black and white, black and white rules of behavior, black and white notions of right and wrong. But times change. Now the Church is going green.

The Vatican is building Europe’s largest solar plant on 740 acres near the medieval Italian village of Santa Maria di Galeria. The Vatican is putting their green dollars into green technologies to harness sunlight for energy, global recession be damned. (Oops- sorry Sister!)



An article on Bloomberg quoted a Vatican official:  “Now is the time to strike,” Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican City’s governor, said in an interview from his study overlooking the Michelangelo-designed Basilica of St. Peter’s. “One should take advantage of the crisis to try and develop these renewable-energy sources to the maximum, which in the long run will reap incomparable rewards.”

While many countries worldwide drag their feet on green power, the Vatican is putting what’s right before short term profit.  The European Union has a target to get an average 20 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020.

This Roman Catholic city-state has an advantage by its small size, and will get revenue and solar aid from Italy after 2014, when the new plant comes online and like water into wine, transforms the Vatican into an electricity exporter to Italy.



The solar array will power 40,000 households. Pope Benedict XVI and the 900 inhabitants of the 0.2 square-mile country can’t use it all. Vatican Radio will be solar powered, bring the “good news” greenly to 35 countries.

The Vatican has also been offered a ‘Green Popemobile’ by Solarworld executives, a low- emissions electric car to tool the pontiff around town.

And apparently the Pope considers pollution a sin. During an address on World Peace Day in 2006, he said:

“The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the Earth’s resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development.” The Vatican has listed pollution as one of seven “social” sins in addition to all the temptations of the flesh and so forth.

“You offend God not only by stealing, taking the Lord’s name in vain or coveting your neighbor’s wife but also by wrecking the environment,” proclaimed Bishop Gianfranco Girotti.
The Vatican has also:

• Covered the roof of the Paul VI auditorium with 2,400 solar panels to produce 300 kilowatt hours of energy a year, enough for 100 households, cutting carbon-dioxide emissions by about 225 tons.
• Decked out the Vatican cafeteria a solar-heating system to provide air conditioning and heating for the whole building.
• Begun looking into converting hay and horse manure from the pope’s Castel Gandolfo summer residence into a renewable-energy project to break down biodegradable waste material to produce methane and gas.  “We are not thinking only in terms of solar energy but also energy that can be produced from the gasification of natural products,” Lajolo said in a March 20 interview. “So everything that comes from the stable or from hay.” This may give new meaning to the exclamation “holy sh-t!”
• Hung a large electronic board that counts the kilowatt hours generated and amount of carbon dioxide saved. Plus it enumerates the sins of anyone passing by.

The planned solar station is expected to save 91,000 tons of carbon-dioxide emissions a year. Now if we can just convince them to install Greenopolis Recycling Kiosks that forgive one sin for every bottle or can you recycle, we can all get to heaven…