Latest news with #Laudatosi
Herald Malaysia
5 days ago
- General
- Herald Malaysia
Papua New Guinea receives funds to continue bringing spirit of Laudato si' to life
Boasting more than 5% of the world's biodiversity on 1% of land area, Papua New Guinea receives payment to continue its work of conserving its forests and reducing CO2 emissions. Jul 25, 2025 National Forest Inventory Botany team members tag and record plant specimens collected the previous day at the NFI camp near Kupiano, Papua New Guinea. (© UN-REDD Programme) By Kielce GussieAt the beginning of July, Papua New Guinea (PNG) became the first small island developing State in the world, and only the second country in Asia and the Pacific after Indonesia, to receive a results-based payment for the country's work in halting deforestation and conserving forests. This payment is part of the initiative REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus), which is focused on encouraging and rewarding developing countries for their effort in this area. In an interview with Vatican News, Serena Fortuna, Senior Forestry Officer at the FAO, explained Papua New Guinea's work, its importance, and how the country's mission to protect the planet ties into Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato si' . Small but (bio)diverse Papua New Guinea is a nation consisting of the mainland and around 600 offshore islands. Despite being roughly the size of California, the country boasts one of the highest rates of forest cover in the world - 78%. As Fortuna described, the island nation is a hotspot for ecological variety, housing 'over 5% of the planet's biodiversity, but on less than 1% of the Earth's total land area', as well as 'more than 13,000 documented plant species.' Since it's home to an important treasure trove of biodiversity and untouched green spaces, Papua New Guinea, in recent decades, has become a leading voice on forests and the fight against climate change. Together with Costa Rica, PNG first proposed the concept of a global initiative that rewards developing countries for efforts to stop deforestation. Preservation for the future REDD+ was created as a result of this proposal. The initiative is a chance to increase discussion across different sectors and encourage participation from different groups of people—local communities, indigenous peoples, governments—to reach their national climate and forest goals.--Vatican News
Herald Malaysia
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Herald Malaysia
Pope: God's creation is not a battleground for vital resources
In his Message for the 10th World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Pope Leo XIV quotes extensively from Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato si', denouncing environmental and social injustice and noting that God's creation is not intended to be a battleground for vital resources. Jul 02, 2025 By Linda BordoniAs the Church prepares to mark the Tenth World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on 1 September 2025, Pope Leo XIV's message for the occasion urges Christians and all people of goodwill to recognize the urgent need for environmental and social justice in a world increasingly scarred by climate change, conflict, and inequality. Entitled Seeds of Peace and Hope and released on July 2, the Pope's message resonates with the spirit of the ongoing Jubilee Year, calling the faithful to embrace their role as "pilgrims of hope" and stewards of God's creation. Justice in a wounded world Echoing the prophetic words of Isaiah, Pope Leo invites the global community to envision a transformation of today's 'arid and parched desert' into 'a fruitful field.' This biblical vision, he explains, is not a poetic metaphor but an urgent call to action in the face of alarming ecological and human crises. Quoting extensively from Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato si' in the year of its 10th anniversary, he writes, 'Injustice, violations of international law and the rights of peoples, grave inequalities, and the greed that fuels them are spawning deforestation, pollution, and the loss of biodiversity.' Linking environmental destruction to the exploitation of the poor and marginalized, he highlights the disproportionate suffering of indigenous communities and the widening gap between rich and poor as hallmarks of a system that treats nature as a commodity rather than a common home. Nature as a battleground He laments the fact that nature itself has become 'a bargaining chip,' subjected to policies and practices that prioritize profit over people and the planet. From agricultural lands riddled with landmines to conflicts over water and raw materials, Pope Leo paints a sobering picture of a creation 'turned into a battleground' for control and domination. These wounds, he says, are 'the effect of sin,' a betrayal of the biblical command not to dominate creation, but to 'till and keep' it, a call to cultivate and preserve the Earth through a relationship of care and responsibility. Environmental justice as a moral imperative The Pope's message reaffirms the Church's commitment to an 'integral ecology,' a concept at the heart of Laudato si' . Environmental justice, the Holy Father affirms, is not an abstract or secondary concern but a 'duty born of faith.' 'For believers,' he writes, 'the universe reflects the face of Jesus Christ, in whom all things were created and redeemed.' In this light, caring for the planet becomes not only an ecological necessity but also a profoundly spiritual and moral vocation. Seeds that bear fruit Encouraging concrete action, Pope Leo calls for perseverance and love in sowing 'seeds of justice' that will, in time, bear the fruits of peace. He cites the Borgo Laudato Si' project at Castel Gandolfo as a tangible example of how education and community life rooted in ecological values can shape a just and hopeful future. 'This may take years,' the Pope acknowledges, 'but years that involve an entire ecosystem made up of continuity, fidelity, cooperation and love.' A blessing for the future Concluding his message with a prayer for the outpouring of God's Spirit, Pope Leo XVI invokes the hope of the risen Christ as the guiding light for a world longing for healing. 'May [ Laudato si' ] continue to inspire us,' he writes, 'and may integral ecology be increasingly accepted as the right path to follow.'--Vatican News
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.
