Every year the Vatican receives a Christmas tree from some corner of the world, as part of its tradition, and this year the Holy See got a 33-meter high, 120-year old tree from the Southern forest of Austria, which will decorate the state's square until Christmas passes. Officials have announced that the wood that will be recovered once the tree is removed will be used to create school benches for needy children and also as many toys as possible, to be distributed throughout the world.

 

The tree is usually decorated the week before the 12th of December, and lit up on that date. This year, the ceremony took place amid heavy rain drops, as huge amounts of water have been falling from the sky over Rome for a few days now. However, this didn't stop a large crowd from assembling, as always, to watch the ceremony.

 

This latest pledge on the part of the Holy See is just one in a long series of actions, through which the Vatican wants to show that its intentions of going “green” are real. No more than a month ago, the Holy See activated a large array of solar panels on its meeting halls, which now supply a decent amount of electricity to power up the city. Over the next few years, the Papal state will try to set itself in line with existing EU climate policies, and some sources say that the Vatican could even become one of the world's first clean energy exporters.

 

The move eased environmentalists' spirits, who had already started criticizing the Holy See for accepting such an old and massive tree to be cut down just for ornamental purposes. They say that stopping deforestation should be a worldwide effort that authorities from both politics and religion should lead. Now, they are pleased that at least some children will benefit from it, rather than the whole thing go to waste, as it did the previous years. Hopefully, this year will set the basis for a new tradition, one that involves more than a tree being artificially lit in a town square.