For the second time, Pope Francis has called attention to illegal diamond trading, which he says fuels instability and terrorism.
“We cannot be silent about forms of illegal trafficking that arise in situations of poverty and, in turn, lead to greater poverty and exclusion,” the Pope said in his Nov. 26 address to the United Nations in Nairobi, Kenya, according to a transcript from Vatican Radio. “Illegal trade in diamonds and precious stones, rare metals or those of great strategic value, wood, biological material, and animal products, such as ivory trafficking and the relative killing of elephants, fuels political instability, organized crime, and terrorism.”
He previously listed blood diamonds as a societal ill in his encyclical on climate change.
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