priest

Residents of the Val Di Ledro Valley, in the Terdino Alto Adige region of northeastern Italy, are asking Pope Francis to heed their plea for a fir tree: in a letter they made public through the website Change.org, they addressed the pontiff and asked him “to prevent the cutting of a century-old fir tree located in Trentino”.

The tree is expected to be moved to St. Peter’s Square and decorated for Christmas, as reported by APE-MPE.

“Our Lady, we invite you to come to our valley and visit our beautiful places”, add the residents of Trentino. Their petition already has over 40,000 signatures. They call their fir, “green giant”, because its history exceeds two centuries and its height is 30 meters.

It is located exactly where, once, Italy’s border with the Austro-Hungarian Empire was drawn, near Lake Garda.

The municipality of Leandro is preparing to spend 60,000 euros to transport the “green giant” to the Vatican. In the appeal, this amount is requested to be allocated for the needs of the 5,000 residents of the area, such as e.g. to strengthen the public health system, by recruiting family doctors.

Residents and environmental organizations took legal action to save the fir

Environmental organizations in the area also relied on a lawyer, who they asked to be active in order to prevent – or at least postpone – the cutting of this historic tree.

The lawyer took legal action on behalf of local councils and associations to prevent “this senseless carnage”. “There is no point in talking about the damage caused by climate change if we perpetuate customs like this, which impose the death of a secular fir, a symbol of those millions of trees cut down in Italy,” ANSA reported.

Residents and organizations hope that their appeal will be heard and rely mainly on the strong ecological sensitivity of Pope Francis, who has put the environment at the center of his encyclicals, inspired among others by initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

Residents of the Ledro Valley have also presented an alternative proposal: to place a tree in the Vatican made of wood from smaller trees that were uprooted or broken due to extreme weather conditions. A tree with “artistic interventions”, which could be used, with different decorations, in the years to come.