Pope Francis adapted Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet quote in an appeal to people not to remain blind to the destruction of climate change and the mass migration it may cause, writing: “To see or not to see, that is the question.”

Axar.az reports citing foreign media that Francis went on to urge people to work together to protect “creation, our common home” and not “hunker down” in individualism, in the preface of a document by the Vatican development office on the pastoral care of people displaced by climatic events.

“I suggest we adapt Hamlet’s famous ‘to be or not to be’ and affirm: ‘To see or not to see, that is the question!’ Where it starts is with each one’s seeing, yes, mine and yours,” Francis wrote.

“We are not going to get out of crises like climate or COVID-19 by hunkering down in individualism but only by ‘being many together’, by encounter and dialogue and cooperation,” he added in the preface to the 30-page study released on Tuesday.