Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

The author visits the Vatican to talk with Rafael Tornini, the Vatican Director of Gardens and Garbage, about pest control. Green parrots are the problem animal in the Vatican’s gardens because they eat seeds (240); however, they are seen as part of the system and not controlled. Pope Francis decreed that biological controls, such as beneficial insects and bats, should be undertaken instead of chemical ones (241). Upon seeing a large compost pile, Roach inquires about rats. Tornini responds that they are a big problem, so measures have to be taken against them.

Curious about how the treatment of rats squares with Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical, On Care for Our Common Home, which states that “Each creature has its own purpose […] None is superfluous” (244), she talks to bioethicist Father Carlo Casalone at the Pontifical Academy for Life. Father Casalone explains that in the encyclical, the pope points out how St. Francis referred to water, the sun, and the moon as brothers and sisters. Roach brings up rodents, to which he says that siblings do not always get along, and sometimes, people have to deal with negative situations (244).

Roach presses for details on dealing with the problems, citing the example of Canadian geese being killed for defecating on golf courses.