Pope's environment speech Aug-Sep 2009 - a hoax?

[Ronja]

I'm being my usual nitpicker with this, but it has started to bug me that I cannot find a proper reference for this quote, claimed to be uttered by the current pope during one of the first days of September 2009 (or one of the last days of August 2009). All links that I have found lead to the same empty page on the same website http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=zenit&id=26693.

The Vatican website has loads and loads and loads of idiotic and horribly irresponsible things said by this pope and his predecessor, all neatly organized, but this quote is not to be found:

Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the “final authority,” and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

James Randi is one how has commented on this alleged speech by the pope: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swi ... ation.html

and so has an apparently pro-catholic site: http://www.catholicculture.org/news/hea ... oryid=3882

So what the heck happened with/to this speech? Was it ever given? If yes, why is there no record of it?

And why oh why do I have to let things like this irk me???

[klr]

Very odd indeed. It seems that most of the pages that quote this link back to that "empty" page on catholic.net, which is probably some sort of place-holder for a faulty link. Isn't there a Catholic version of the "404" error?

Anyway, one has to assume that the catholic.net page was the original source, otherwise so many people wouldn't have referred to it at the time.

So, is the Vatican re-writing history? Or maybe the Pope isn't quite so infallible ...

And yes, it irks the record-keeper in me as well.

[Ronja]

And yes, it irks the record-keeper in me as well.

Thank goodness it's not just me. *sigh*of*relief*

Tip of the day: searching and browsing on the Vatican web site is a pretty sure way to start feeling displeased with and/or paranoid about too many things in this world. Not really worth it, in other words.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Could be that speech is on a bad sector of a harddrive.

Or maybe we should put Orwellian on the job?

[Pappa]

I've hunted all the usual archives/caches and it seem to be blank everywhere. Loads of forums have a link to the page, but none seem to have quoted the text of the speech before it was blanked.