Pope Francis said yesterday it was time for “predators” to stop plundering the Earth for financial gain, holding up the “scarred face of the Amazon” as a warning.

The poor are “threatened by predatory models of development”, the pope said at a Mass at the end of a three-week Vatican assembly, or “synod”, on the Pan-Amazonian region.

“The mistakes of the past were not enough to stop the plundering of other persons and the inflicting of wounds on our brothers and sisters and on our sister earth: we have seen it in the scarred face of the Amazon region,” he said.

Some 184 Catholic bishops had gathered at the Vatican with representatives of indigenous peoples, experts and nuns, to discuss a multitude of regional concerns, from the destruction of the rainforest and the global climate emergency, to land-grabbing and the exploitation of indigenous peoples.

Francis slammed those with power who look down on others: “considering them backward and of little worth, they despise their traditions, erase their history, occupy their lands, and usurp their goods”.