Pope to recommend urgent action on environment

VATICAN CITY -- A draft copy of Pope Francis' awaited encyclical on the environment calls for urgent action to protect the Earth and fight global warming, which the pope says is "mostly" due to human activity and the burning of fossil fuels.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the document leaked to the Italian newsweekly L'Espresso and published on its website Monday was not the final version, and the official encyclical still would be released as scheduled on Thursday.

The L'Espresso draft, which was published in galley form in Italian, makes many of the same points Francis and his advisers have been making in the months-long rollout of the document.

In the draft, Francis lays out the scientific and moral reasons for protecting God's creation, noting the poor already are suffering the most from air pollution and toxic dumping and will continue to bear the brunt of rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions. The draft says population growth isn't to blame for ecological problems, but rather the consumerist, wasteful behavior of the rich.

Francis backs up his comments with science showing the impact on the planet of the continual loss of biodiversity in Amazonian rainforests, the melting of Arctic glaciers, the overfishing of the seas and the pollution of the world's water supply.