Latest news with #Laudatosi
Herald Malaysia
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Herald Malaysia
Archbishop Paglia concludes mandate as President of Pontifical Academy for Life
In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia discusses the conclusion of his service as President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, explaining that it is ordinary practice in the Roman Curia that, upon turning 80, all appointments expire. May 27, 2025 Archbishop Paglia speaks at a previous conference in Chile ((Conferencia Episcopal Chilena)) Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia recently returned from an international conference in Argentina, where he reiterated that life must always be protected, at every stage. Now, he has concluded a decade of work as the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, a post the late Pope Francis entrusted to him in August 2016. Speaking to the Italian newspaper La Stampa , Archbishop Paglia noted that his 80th birthday was on April 20, 2025. 'Pope Francis asked me to continue' A few days ago, Pope Leo XIV appointed Cardinal Baldassare Reina to succeed Archbishop Paglia as Grand Chancellor for the Pontifical 'John Paul II' Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences. 'It's ordinary practice in the Roman Curia,' the Archbishop explained to La Stampa . 'Once you reach 80, all assignments expire. I turned 80 on the very day Pope Francis died, which delayed the notification.' 'Obviously,' he stressed, 'this also ends my mandate as President of the Pontifical Academy for Life.' Archbishop Paglia added that he had already submitted his resignation to the late Pope Francis upon turning 75, 'as everyone does,' adding that 'the Pope told me to continue until I was 80.' 'World is collapsing; fraternity is urgent' Archbishop Paglia spoke on bioethics at the international conference organized by the Catholic University of Buenos Aires to mark the 10th anniversary of the encyclical Laudato si' . He reaffirmed the Church's desire to defend life 'in every context, at every stage, and at every age.' In a world 'falling to pieces,' he said, we urgently need to 'set out to achieve genuine fraternity both among peoples and with creation.' He said we need 'a vision of a pacified humanity—a new humanism. The path exists: a disarmed, disarming, humble, and persevering peace. These are words spoken on May 8 by Pope Leo XIV. May they guide and inspire us.'--Vatican News
National Observer
26-05-2025
- Politics
- National Observer
What Pope Leo means for global climate action and colonialism
This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. 'The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,' he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that 'under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the Native peoples.' Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples' guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. 'Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,' he said. To Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an Indigenous leader who was in the stadium that day, the words from the head of the Catholic Church — which claims 1.4 billion members and has a long, sordid history of violence against Indigenous peoples worldwide — were welcome and momentous. 'Few world leaders have spoken about our issues, and the pope said publicly the rights of Indigenous peoples were historically violated,' he said after Pope Francis died last month. 'Let us hope that the new pope is a person who can continue implementing the position the pope who passed away has been talking about.' During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world's most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the church's role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism. As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world — and far-right politics continues to rise globally — experts see the conclave's selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV, as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn't going anywhere. In 2015, Pope Francis released his historic papal letter, or encyclical, titled Laudato si '. In the roughly 180-page document, he unequivocally identified planet-heating pollution as a pressing global issue disproportionately impacting the world's poor, and condemned the outsize role wealthy countries like the US have in contributing to the climate crisis. With it, Francis did what no pope had done before: He spoke with great clarity and urgency about human degradation of the environment being not just an environmental issue, but a social and moral one. Laudato si' established the definitive connection between faith, climate change, and social justice, and made it a tenet of Catholic doctrine. The lasting influence of Francis' encyclical would be buoyed by his other writings, homilies, and his direct appeals to world leaders. He was, for example, credited with helping rally nearly 200 countries to sign the 2015 Paris Agreement, regularly urged cooperation at international climate summits, and released a follow-up to his pioneering encyclical in 2023 that sounded the alarm in the face of the climate crisis. 'Pope Francis routinely said that we have a throwaway society. We throw away people, we throw away nature … and that we really need a culture that's much more based in care,' said Christopher Cox, executive director of the Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment and a former priest. 'That means care for people, especially the most poor, the most vulnerable, the most marginalized. And we also need much greater care for creation. We've been given a beautiful earth and we're consuming it at a rate that goes far beyond what will be able to sustain life for the long term.' The first Latin American pope, Francis was unique in implicitly embracing some elements of liberation theology, a Catholic social justice movement that calls for the liberation of marginalized peoples from oppression. Although Francis was occasionally critical of the doctrine's Marxist elements and never fully supportive of it, many observers see his statements regarding poor and Indigenous peoples as reflective of the doctrine's central values. 'Right from the beginning of his papacy, that outreach, that recognition of Indigenous ways of being Catholic and Indigenous language in Catholicism, heralded — up to that point — the most expansive official recognition of Indigenous contributions to Catholicism thus far,' said Eben Levey, an assistant professor of history at Alfred University who has studied the relationship between the Catholic Church and Indigenous peoples in Latin America. In the centuries since conquistadors arrived in the Americas and forced Indigenous peoples to accept their religion, many Indigenous communities have made Catholicism their own, and a growing number of church leaders have embraced the idea that there are multiple ways of being Catholic and that Catholicism and Indigenous cultures can coexist. A year after becoming pope, Francis approved the use of two Mayan languages, Tzotzil and Tzeltal, in mass and sacraments like baptism and confession. In 2015 he expanded that list to include the Aztec language Nahuatl, and in 2016, during a visit to Mexico, he celebrated mass in Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Chol. In 2022, Francis officially apologized to Canada for the residential schools that ripped Indigenous children from their families, leading to the deaths of many who were later buried in unmarked graves. The following year, he rejected the Doctrine of Discovery, a religious concept that colonizers used to justify the illegal seizure of land from Indigenous peoples and became part of an 1823 US Supreme Court ruling that described Native Americans as 'savages.' 'The Doctrine of Discovery is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,' Pope Francis said, adding that he strongly supports the global implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He also drew a clear connection between those rights and climate action: In 2023, he made clear that Indigenous peoples are critical to fighting climate change when he said, 'Ignoring the original communities in the safeguarding of the Earth is a serious mistake, not to say a great injustice.' But Pope Francis' progressivism had its limits. In 2019, he called for a meeting of church leaders, known as the Synod of Bishops, for the pan-Amazon region to address issues affecting the Amazon Basin. Indigenous Catholics who attended brought up illegal logging and violence against land defenders and proposed reforms. 'The ancestral wisdom of the aboriginal peoples affirms that mother earth has a feminine face,' reads the document that emerged from the gathering and urged the church to give women more leadership roles and allow married deacons to be ordained as priests. In his response, Francis condemned corporations that destroy the Amazon as committing 'injustice and crime,' yet refused to embrace the proposals to make church leadership more inclusive of women and married men. Francis' climate activism was also riddled in constraint. He transformed how religious institutions viewed the climate crisis, framing a failure to act on it as a brutal injustice toward the most vulnerable, but could have implemented 'more direct institutional action,' said Nadia Ahmad, a Barry University School of Law associate professor who has studied faith-based environmental action. Though the former pontiff publicly supported renewable energy adoption, called for fossil fuel disinvestment, and prompted churches across the world to go solar, he did not mandate what he deemed a 'radical energy transition' across dioceses, schools, and hospitals. The work he accomplished 'could have been amplified a bit more and had more accountability,' said Ahmad. But that limitation, she noted, likely stemmed from contradictory politics playing out within the church — many traditional, conservative Catholics, particularly in the United States, resisted Francis' progressive teachings. A 2021 study found that over a period of five years, most US bishops were 'nearly silent and sometimes even misleading,' in their official messaging to parishioners about climate change and the pope's famed encyclical. Though Pope Leo XIV has been lauded for his advocacy in defense of immigrants and worker rights — his namesake, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until 1903, is known as a historical Catholic champion of social justice and equality — the new pope's track record on engaging directly with climate change is sparse. Still, Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, sees comments the new pope made last year on the need to move ' from words to action ' as a promising sign that he will continue Francis' commitment to communicating the urgency of a warming world. The timing of the conclave's unprecedented decision to select the first pontiff from the United States, coming amid the Trump administration's sweeping dismissal of climate action, elimination of environmental protections, and attacks on Indigenous rights, isn't lost on her. 'It may be a signal to say, 'America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future where we collectively have been working to create a future worthy of our children and our children's children,'' she said. Leo grew up in Chicago and is a citizen of both the US and Peru, where he spent decades serving as a missionary and bishop before Francis made him a cardinal in 2023. He speaks five languages fluently and some Quechua, an Indigenous Incan language. While he was working in Peru in the 1990s, Leo was critical of the government's human rights abuses — though he refrained from explicitly taking sides in the political fight between Maoist rebels and the government of then-dictator Alberto Fujimori, according to Matthew Casey, a historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University based in Lima. Still, his reaction to the country's authoritarianism could provide a glimpse of what stances he might take as pope, Casey said. 'It doesn't matter who was abusing human rights, he was on the side of the people,' he said. In 2016, the would-be pontiff spoke at a conference in Brazil where attendees talked about threats to the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous peoples who lived there. He praised Francis' encyclical, describing the document as 'very important' and representing 'something new in terms of this explicit expression of the church's concern for all of creation.' To Casey, that suggests Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor, has an awareness of the issues affecting Indigenous peoples, such as the rampant degradation of the environment. 'Both Francis and Prevost are attuned to Indigeneity in ways that they couldn't have been if they worked in Europe or the United States, because the politics of Indigeneity in Latin America are just so different,' Casey said. More than a week after the conclave that named him pope, communities across Peru are still celebrating the selection of Pope Leo XIV. Francis and Leo's shared experiences working with marginalized communities harmed by colonialism and climate change, and their commitment to the social justice aspects of the church's mission, are particularly meaningful in this political moment, said Levey, the Alfred University historian. 'We are seeing a resurgence of ultra right-wing politics globally, and the Catholic Church, next to the United Nations, is one of the few multilateral organizations perhaps capable of responding in some form or fashion to the questions of our modern age or contemporary moment,' he said.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What Pope Leo means for global climate action and colonialism
On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. 'The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,' he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that 'under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the native peoples.' Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples' guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. 'Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,' he said. To Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an Indigenous leader who was in the stadium that day, the words from the head of the Catholic Church — which claims 1.4 billion members and has a long, sordid history of violence against Indigenous peoples worldwide — were welcome and momentous. 'Few world leaders have spoken about our issues, and the pope said publicly the rights of Indigenous peoples were historically violated,' he said after Pope Francis died last month. 'Let us hope that the new pope is a person who can continue implementing the position the pope who passed away has been talking about.' During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world's most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the Church's role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism. As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world — and far-right politics continues to rise globally — experts see the conclave's selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn't going anywhere. In 2015, Pope Francis released his historic papal letter, or encyclical, titled Laudato si'. In the roughly 180-page document, he unequivocally identified planet-heating pollution as a pressing global issue disproportionately impacting the world's poor, and condemned the outsize role wealthy countries like the U.S. have in contributing to the climate crisis. With it, Francis did what no pope had done before: He spoke with great clarity and urgency about human degradation of the environment being not just an environmental issue, but a social and moral one. Laudato si' established the definitive connection between faith, climate change, and social justice, and made it a tenet of Catholic doctrine. Read Next Faith organizations have a complex relationship to disaster relief Katie Myers The lasting influence of Francis' encyclical would be buoyed by his other writings, homilies, and his direct appeals to world leaders. He was, for example, credited with helping rally nearly 200 countries to sign the 2015 Paris Agreement, regularly urged cooperation at international climate summits, and released a follow-up to his pioneering encyclical in 2023 that sounded the alarm in the face of the climate crisis. 'Pope Francis routinely said that we have a throwaway society. We throw away people, we throw away nature … and that we really need a culture that's much more based in care,' said Christopher Cox, executive director of the Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment and a former priest. 'That means care for people, especially the most poor, the most vulnerable, the most marginalized. And we also need much greater care for creation. We've been given a beautiful earth and we're consuming it at a rate that goes far beyond what will be able to sustain life for the long term.' The first Latin American pope, Francis was unique in implicitly embracing some elements of liberation theology, a Catholic social justice movement that calls for the liberation of marginalized peoples from oppression. Although Francis was occasionally critical of the doctrine's Marxist elements and never fully supportive of it, many observers see his statements regarding poor and Indigenous peoples as reflective of the doctrine's central values. 'Right from the beginning of his papacy, that outreach, that recognition of Indigenous ways of being Catholic and Indigenous language in Catholicism, heralded — up to that point — the most expansive official recognition of Indigenous contributions to Catholicism thus far,' said Eben Levey, an assistant professor of history at Alfred University who has studied the relationship between Catholic Church and Indigenous peoples in Latin America. In the centuries since conquistadores arrived in the Americas and forced Indigenous peoples to accept their religion, many Indigenous communities have made Catholicism their own, and a growing number of church leaders have embraced the idea that there are multiple ways of being Catholic and that Catholicism and Indigenous cultures can coexist. A year after becoming pope, Francis approved the use of two Mayan languages, Tzotzil and Tzeltal, in mass and sacraments like baptism and confession. In 2015 he expanded that list to include the Aztec language Nahuatl, and in 2016, during a visit to Mexico, he celebrated mass in Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chol. In 2022, Francis officially apologized to Canada for the residential schools that ripped Indigenous children from their families, leading to the deaths of many who were later buried in unmarked graves. The following year, he rejected the Doctrine of Discovery, a religious concept that colonizers used to justify the illegal seizure of land from Indigenous peoples and became part of an 1823 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that described Native Americans as 'savages.' 'The Doctrine of Discovery is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,' Pope Francis said, adding that he strongly supports the global implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He also drew a clear connection between those rights and climate action: In 2023, he made clear that Indigenous peoples are critical to fighting climate change when he said, 'Ignoring the original communities in the safeguarding of the Earth is a serious mistake, not to say a great injustice.' But Pope Francis' progressivism had its limits. In 2019, he called for a meeting of church leaders, known as the Synod of Bishops, for the Pan-Amazon region to address issues affecting the Amazon Basin. Indigenous Catholics who attended brought up illegal logging and violence against land defenders and proposed reforms. 'The ancestral wisdom of the aboriginal peoples affirms that mother earth has a feminine face,' reads the document that emerged from the gathering and urged the church to give women more leadership roles and allow married deacons to be ordained as priests. In his response, Francis condemned corporations that destroy the Amazon as committing 'injustice and crime,' yet refused to embrace the proposals to make church leadership more inclusive of women and married men. Francis' climate activism was also riddled in constraint. He transformed how religious institutions viewed the climate crisis, framing a failure to act on it as a brutal injustice toward the most vulnerable, but could have implemented 'more direct institutional action,' said Nadia Ahmad, a Barry University School of Law associate professor who has studied faith-based environmental action. Though the former pontiff publicly supported renewable energy adoption, called for fossil fuel disinvestment, and prompted churches across the world to go solar, he did not mandate what he deemed a 'radical energy transition' across dioceses, schools, and hospitals. The work he accomplished 'could have been amplified a bit more and had more accountability,' said Ahmad. But that limitation, she noted, likely stemmed from contradictory politics playing out within the church — many traditional, conservative Catholics, particularly in the United States, resisted Francis' progressive teachings. A 2021 study found that over a period of five years, most U.S. bishops were 'nearly silent and sometimes even misleading,' in their official messaging to parishioners about climate change and the pope's famed encyclical. Read Next The pope leads 1.4 billion Catholics. Getting them to care about the climate is harder than he thought. Whitney Bauck Though Pope Leo XIV has been lauded for his advocacy in defense of immigrants and worker rights — his namesake, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until 1903 is known as a historical Catholic champion of social justice and equality — the new pope's track record on engaging directly with climate change is sparse. Still, Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, sees comments the new pope made last year on the need to move 'from words to action' as a promising sign that he will continue Francis' commitment to communicating the urgency of a warming world. The timing of the conclave's unprecedented decision to select the first pontiff from the United States, coming amid the Trump administration's sweeping dismissal of climate action, elimination of environmental protections, and attacks on Indigenous rights, isn't lost on her. 'It may be a signal to say 'America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future where we collectively have been working to create a future worthy of our children and our children's children,'' she said. Leo grew up in Chicago and is a citizen of both the U.S. and Peru, where he spent decades serving as a missionary and bishop before Francis made him a cardinal in 2023. He speaks five languages fluently and some Quechua, an Indigenous Incan language. While he was working in Peru in the 1990s, Leo was critical of the government's human rights abuses — though he refrained from explicitly taking sides in the political fight between Maoist rebels and the government of then-dictator Alberto Fujimori, according to Matthew Casey, a historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University based in Lima. Still, his reaction to the country's authoritarianism could provide a glimpse of what stances he might take as pope, Casey said. 'It doesn't matter who was abusing human rights, he was on the side of the people,' he said. In 2016, the would-be pontiff spoke at a conference in Brazil where attendees talked about threats to the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous peoples who lived there. He praised Francis' encyclical, describing the document as 'very important,' and representing 'something new in terms of this explicit expression of the church's concern for all of creation.' To Casey, that suggests Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor, has an awareness of the issues affecting Indigenous peoples, such as the rampant degradation of the environment. 'Both Francis and Prevost are attuned to Indigeneity in ways that they couldn't have been if they worked in Europe or the United States, because the politics of Indigeneity in Latin America are just so different,' Casey said. More than a week after the conclave that named him pope, communities across Peru are still celebrating the selection of Pope Leo XIV. Francis and Leo's shared experiences working with marginalized communities harmed by colonialism and climate change, and their commitment to the social justice aspects of the church's mission, are particularly meaningful in this political moment, said Levey, the Alfred University historian. 'We are seeing a resurgence of ultra right wing politics globally, and the Catholic Church next to the United Nations is one of the few multilateral organizations perhaps capable of responding in some form or fashion to the questions of our modern age or contemporary moment,' he said. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What Pope Leo means for global climate action and colonialism on May 14, 2025.
Tatler Asia
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Tatler Asia
Pope Francis dies at 88: How the first Latin American pontiff impacted the Catholic Church
Laudato si' Above Laudato si' cover (Photo: Courtesy of National Catholic Register) Pope Francis issued in May 2015 the influential document Laudato si' , which addressed the climate crisis and denounced wasteful consumption. This also strengthened the Catholic Church's advocacy towards upholding the rights of Indigenous peoples, which extends to the continuity of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. Pope Francis makes a historic visit to Iraq Above People celebrate and wave flags after the completion of a mass conducted by Pope Francis at the Franso Hariri Stadium on March 07, 2021 in Erbil, Iraq. Pope Francis arrived in Erbil, the final stop of his historic four-day visit, the first ever papal visit to Iraq (Photo by) Pope Francis had significant meetings with various leaders of governments and other faiths, particularly visiting places torn by socio-political and religious conflicts. Two of which were Iraq and Mongolia, making him the first Pope to visit these countries. Moreover, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I and Pope Francis' meeting in February 2016 marked the first time for the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches to be together. His other significant pastoral visits also include the Philippines in 2015, where he celebrated Mass with survivors of the 2013 typhoon Haiyan in Leyte, among other itineraries. Read more: Pope Francis makes a historic visit to Iraq, the cradle of the Abrahamic religions Public apologies to survivors of sexual abuse by the clergy and other radical efforts to change the Church Above The Pope: Answers trailer In July 2022, he made a 'penitential pilgrimage' to Canada, where he met with survivors of the country's religious-run residential schools, which had notorious records of physical and sexual abuses. He even joined a 2019 summit on paedophilia, sexual abuse, and homosexuality. Since then, Pope Francis has been known for expressing his wisdom towards these matters and has called for bringing the abusers to justice. In 2023, Hulu and Disney Plus released the documentary The Pope: Answers , where Pope Francis had an honest conversation with ten Spanish-speaking young people from various cultural and gender backgrounds to talk about pressing issues like feminism, the role of women in the Church, reproductive rights, loss of faith, the migration crisis, LGBTQIA+ rights, abuse within the Church, racism, and mental health. One of the most recent groundbreaking acts of Pope Francis was his formal approval of allowing Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples. Though not to be confused with the ritual of marriage, the said blessing sparked criticisms from various fronts. Read more: 10 Critical films that tackle crises on faith and the Catholic Church Pope's special Urbi et Orbi during the COVID-19 pandemic Photo 1 of 2 Pope Francis prays on the sagrato of St. Peter's Square to deliver a special Urbi et Orbi Blessing to the world, on March 27, 2020 in Vatican City, Vatican (Photo by Vatican Pool - Corbis/Getty Images) Photo 2 of 2 Pope Francis attends an extraordinary moment of prayer in time of pandemic, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and delivers an extraordinary 'Urbi Et Orbi' (to the City of Rome and to the World) Blessing in front of an empty Square from the sagrato of St. Peter's Basilica on March 27, 2020 in Vatican City, Vatican (Photo by) One of the most iconic photographs taken of Pope Francis was when he delivered an extraordinary blessing of Urbi et Orbi from the steps of St Peter's Basilica on March 27. Though the blessing was reserved for Christmas Day and Easter Sunday, the Supreme Pontiff delivered it while the rest of the world had shut its doors due to the wrath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alone and rain-soaked in the usually jampacked St Peter's Square, he held high the Blessed Sacrament for adoration and imparted his Apostolic Blessing, offering everyone the opportunity to receive a plenary indulgence. Read more: The Catholic Church and social media during the Lenten season and COVID-19 pandemic Pope Francis requested that the funeral rites be simplified Above Pope Francis attends an audience with President of Iraq Barham Ahmed Salih at the Apostolic Palace on November 24, 2018 in Vatican City, Vatican (Photo by) Having lived a life well-lived, Pope Francis will always be remembered as the Pope who made the Catholic Church strip its pomp and grandeur to tread the 21st century with humility and genuine concern for others. In April 2024, he approved an updated edition of the liturgical book for papal funeral rites, re-focusing the Supreme Pontiff as a pastor and disciple of Christ and not as a globally powerful person. 'The second edition of the Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis introduces several new elements, including how the Pope's mortal remains are to be handled after death,' Devin Watkins of Vatican News reported. 'The ascertainment of death takes place in the chapel, rather than in the room where he died, and his body is immediately placed inside the coffin.' NOW READ Fast Facts: Cardinal Chito Tagle 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines: The influence of Catholicism on Philippine art Holy Week 2025: Here are 5 churches and sanctuaries that tell a story
Irish Times
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Eamon Ryan: Here's a job for the next pope. Deliver us from climate apathy
When they close the doors of Sistine Chapel on Wednesday morning I pray the Holy Spirit will inspire every cardinal, reminding them of the cry of the earth, which Pope Francis put centre stage over the last 12 years. I loved it when in the first days of his papacy, Francis defined himself as a sinner, like every one of us. Mercy, forgiveness and humility seemed to be the operating principles of the 'field hospital' church he wanted to create. In time, though, it is his teaching that will stand out, especially his encyclical Laudato si' , connecting care for Mother Earth with concern for the poor, and his exhortation in Laudato Deum for political leaders to stop ignoring the ongoing destruction of our natural world. The next pope will be important in this because this ecological crisis is about to move into a new phase. We will need spiritual leaders who can help us cope with the crisis of confidence that will come with the growing realisation that we are breaching safe atmospheric limits and the 1.5 degree goal committed to in the Paris Agreement 10 years ago. We need to rouse ourselves from what Tony Blair described last week as the current 'era of apathy' around the climate issue. No amount of techno-optimism or books with smart econometrics or energy analysis are going to stir us into action. Instead, we can be inspired by a mission centred around taking responsibility to help protect the next generation and having a stronger sense of belonging to our own local environment, within this dramatically changing world. READ MORE Laudato si' was of historic significance because it bridged a gap that had grown between science and religion over centuries. The theory of evolution has now itself evolved. Martin Luther King said the long arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, but it seems that in the physical universe, living systems also tend to adapt towards ever more complexity, interconnection and love. We will not make the necessary climate leap if it is based on division, whether between rite and reason, the political left and right, rural and urban or young and old. I expect the cardinals will pick someone who will follow the climate leadership of Francis. Almost half the electors are from developing countries, where the destruction of nature and the injustices within the current energy and economic system are so patently clear. There is one other division I hope the next pope can heal. That is the differentiation of roles between men and women in the Catholic Church . In the Irish church's response to the synodal process established by Francis, this was the number one issue, with near unanimous agreement on the need for change. The submissions from every continent told a similar story but so far no real action has been taken. That has to change, and it surely will because the church itself is about to go through a radical transition. I recall Fr Kennedy O'Brien SJ, one of the last Jesuits teaching in Ireland, saying that the proponents of Vatican II are about to see their aspirations fulfilled, because the laicisation of the church is coming, whether people like it or not. In 10 years time, there will not be the clergy to maintain the old order and the pews will become empty unless a new generation finds the church a relevant place to be within. Part of that relevance will surely develop as people come together to pray for the care of creation, and consider what that means for their parish. That should happen as part of a wider ecumenical movement – this issue rightly belongs to people of every faith, creed and conviction. [ Climate anxiety is like parenthood: you get used to living with constant worry Opens in new window ] In the synodal process, it was noteworthy that the issue of protecting the environment did not feature, unless it was brought up by the likes of Trócaire or the local Laudato si' group. I don't think that reflects an intrinsic lack of interest, but rather that many people feel overwhelmed by what they are being told and have a certain sense of helplessness from not knowing what to do. [ Who will be the next pope after Francis and how does the process work? Opens in new window ] The tide of environmental thinking seems to have never been lower. It feels like what happens before a tsunami arrives, when the shoreline drops dramatically in advance of the bigger incoming wave. We have seen such waves of collective climate consciousness over the last 30 years and we need to start thinking about how the next wave can lead to real effective change. If collective consciousness is what matters, then the churches should surely have a key role to play. We need the spirit as well as science on our side. As Francis wrote, the two can come together in care for our common home.
