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Japan Times
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
Pope Francis saw defending the climate as an urgent priority for the world
When Argentina's Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope in 2013, his vision for human justice and equality was so entwined with nature that he chose the papal name Francis, honoring the patron saint of ecology. That belief, and how passionately he advocated for it, influenced the course of global climate and energy policy and in particular the 2015 Paris Agreement. Francis' 2015 papal letter or encyclical, Laudato Si' ("Praise Be to You'), was the first devoted to global warming. It tied together climate science, wealth inequality, consumption (what he lamented as a "throwaway culture') and technology in a 40,000-word missive shared with the world's more than 1 billion Catholics. His words could be blunt: "The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,' he wrote. He continued to speak and write on the topic, telling oil and gas executives in 2018 that transitioning to clean energy was a "duty' to humanity and denouncing climate denial in another document, Laudate Deum. Laudato Si' was "a major contribution to the global mobilization that resulted in the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change,' U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said following Francis's death last Monday at the age of 88. Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the U.N. group overseeing climate diplomacy, described the late pontiff as "a towering figure of human dignity, and an unflinching global champion of climate action as a vital means to deliver it.' Released publicly in June 2015, Laudato Si' launched Francis into what was then the world's most pressing climate debate. With nearly 200 nations due in Paris that fall to negotiate a critical pact on greenhouse gas pollution, the first pope from the Global South harnessed his reach to push for an aggressive deal. Laurence Tubiana, an economist and French diplomat who was president of the 2015 talks, recounted in a 2021 essay how involved Francis was with heads of state and delegations. Diplomats reached out directly to him to help try and bring Nicaragua, one of the few holdouts, into the pact. Nearly all countries agreed to an accord in December, and it became the global framework for governments, cities, companies, investors and communities to develop and deploy climate policies. (The U.S. left the Paris Agreement earlier this year.) Oscar Soria, co-CEO of The Common Initiative, an economics and environmental think tank, first met Bergoglio as a journalist in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s and kept up with him over the years. Soria says the pact would not exist in its final form without Francis. Its preamble addresses climate justice, intergenerational equity and the rights of Indigenous peoples — all central to Francis's platform. That they were included despite being absent from early drafts, Soria attributes to Francis' influence creating "moral urgency' among diplomats. "Those elements made the Paris Agreement a moral and ethical imperative,' he said. "The Paris Agreement has a soul because he put that soul there.' Pope Francis meets climate activist Greta Thunberg at the Vatican in April 2019. | Vatican Media / via REUTERS As much as he energized climate advocates inside and outside the Catholic Church, Francis's criticism of capitalism, business and technology led conservative constituencies to balk at the political implications of his work. A study that analyzed more than 12,000 columns written by U.S. Catholic bishops found that many were either silent about climate change or distanced themselves from either the problem itself or Laudato Si'. Only a third of U.S. Catholics are familiar with the encyclical, according to a March 2024 Georgetown University survey. Yet 32 U.S. dioceses have taken on the Laudato Si' Action Platform, a seven-year commitment to become more sustainable. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops held a session on the letter in November, for the first time since shortly after its publication, to gather ideas to mark its 10th anniversary this year. Laudato Si' Movement, a U.S.-based nonprofit that operates in about 140 countries, launched as the Global Catholic Climate Movement shortly before the encyclical was published and changed its name in 2021. In the decade since its founding, the organization has trained some 20,000 people in a monthslong certification process to become local leaders. Some critics have cast climate change "as something that divides people,' said Reba Elliott, strategy director for Laudato Si' Movement. "At the same time, there is a big constituency of Catholics in the U.S. and beyond who see that climate change is an issue that is connected with the core teachings of the faith.' While hospitalized for pneumonia in March, Francis wrote a message to the national conference of bishops in Brazil, which will host the 30th U.N. climate talks this fall. He lauded the group's effort to launch a campaign before the COP30 summit starts, so that "nations and international organizations can effectively commit themselves to practices that help overcome the climate crisis.' Those invigorated by Francis's climate work expect his commitment will endure, whoever succeeds him. "Ten years is the blink of an eye in church time,' Elliott said. "But a lot has been accomplished so far, and it really shows that Pope Francis was speaking a message that many people want to hear and many people have responded to.'
Irish Times
22-04-2025
- General
- Irish Times
‘It understood the magnitude of ecological destruction': Francis's green legacy is his encyclical Laudato Si'
The green legacy of Pope Francis is encapsulated in his encyclical Laudato Si' . It is a beacon that upended centuries of Catholic church teaching by framing a dialogue for all of humanity. It embraced green radicalism, pleading for collective action to rescue Mother Earth. Subtitled 'On the Care of our Common Home', the challenges it presented went beyond 'tagging God into the global conversation on climate change ' – and the target was far beyond the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. [ Pope Francis obituary: Outsider who attempted to return the church to the people and away from clericalism ] Published in June 2015, the message of Laudato Si' (Praise Be to You) was arresting; the accompanying environmental audit of the world was breathtaking. It was designed to transmit a message of 'serious moral responsibility' to protect the environment. Francis highlighted human damage to the planet that had exacerbated poverty, particularly in the developing world. 'A true 'ecological debt' exists, particularly between the global north and south,' it said, citing over-exploitation of resources and a throwaway lifestyle of the better-off that is frequently incompatible with a sustainable world. READ MORE He was clear on where obligations rested: almost totally among wealthier countries and powerful multinational corporations. 'It is our marching orders for advocacy,' Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of the US Congress of Catholic Bishops said. Columban missionary Fr Seán McDonagh, an unlikely contributor to the document, says Laudato Si' 'is probably the best encyclical I have seen going back to the 19th century'. In his book Laudato Si': an Irish Response (2017), McDonagh wrote it 'is the first papal document to understand the magnitude of the ecological destruction taking place globally and the urgency with which it must be faced'. It rows back on biblical tradition, he says, which dictated that mankind multiply and take over the Earth including every living creature. It addresses 'the central issue of our time – climate change – and destruction of biodiversity', McDonagh says, but 10 years on 'unfortunately, the Catholic church didn't take seriously the message in Laudato Si''. It is seldom at the centre of Christian faith today, he says. And given the world is closer to climate tipping points and scientific evidence provides unprecedented clarity, 'a new Laudato Si' is required'. On a personal basis, he says he had 'a poor enough record with the Vatican' because of his 1990 book The Greening of the Church, which said it must address the global population issue. McDonagh's involvement was initiated after he wrote an article for the Universal Catholic in November 2013. He got a call from Cardinal Peter Turkson, the pope's leading climate adviser, who asked him to write a paper on connections between justice and the creation. He told the cardinal he had a fractious relationship with his predecessor Cardinal Renato Martino, especially after he had run a Vatican conference in 2007 and invited six climate sceptics from the US. That did not preclude McDonagh's input. Within the church, the encyclical was criticised as negating the Christian tradition, but from conversations with Francis after its publication, McDonagh says, the pope was undeterred and displayed profound understanding of ecology and this was reflected in subsequent sermons. As 'an ageing atheist', the late environmentalist Michael Viney , in a 2017 column in The Irish Times, praised the encyclical: 'I can only cheer the greening of the church in such an influential manner.' He praised McDonagh's crusade of over 30 years for 'ecotheology', but said: 'Laudato Si' quite failed to acknowledge human overpopulation as the driver of planetary degradation.' Viney noted, however, the encyclical's value in granting to natural ecosystems 'an intrinsic value independent of their usefulness. Each organism, as a creature of God, is good and admirable in itself ...' Laudato Si' was 'timed to be political' in advance of the annual UN gathering of almost 200 countries on climate action, Cop21 in Paris, says Lorna Gold, director of the Laudato Si' Movement. Pope Francis was 'a political mover' and it was accompanied by a successful diplomatic offensive, she says. It fed into an ambitious coalition including Christiana Figueres, then executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; lead architect of the landmark Paris Agreement, Laurence Tubiana, and small island states (arguably the most vulnerable to climate disruption). This was a key catalyst in forging the historic Paris Agreement. In addressing 'all people on the planet', Francis went beyond his flock, Gold says. 'One of the revolutionary things is that it was the first church document to quote science, philosophy, poetry. It was not self-reverential as so many documents were in the past.' Pope Francis called for an intense and fruitful dialogue between religion and science, where, in the words of theologian Fr Dermot A Lane, 'the human is the culmination of the unfolding history of the cosmos and the evolution of life on Earth'. Vibrancy The encyclical said: 'The divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God's creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet.' It emerged from wide consultation – including contributions from Ireland, especially from McDonagh on biodiversity – 'which made it more rounded', Gold says. This meant it was well received among environmental luminaries of the left such as Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and former president Mary Robinson . A decade on, 'it has been a harder struggle in bringing it into the mainstream of the church than you would have thought', Gold says. It does not get talked about often as negative stories surface, including clerical sex abuse, but there is a vibrant movement around Laudato Si', Gold says. In the timeline of the church, 10 years is the blink of an eye, so this is laying foundations. The movement is established in 191 countries including Ireland but concentrated in the Global South. More than 25,000 'animators' have been trained 'to lead efforts to bring Laudato Si' to their communities and to green the church'. 'Whether it's a transformation of the church, it's too early to say. There's a vibrancy and people relate this to their faith and to social justice,' Gold says. Despite internal opposition, Francis worked to advocate for 'ecological conversion' and 'integral ecology'. The church's leadership has taken a strong position on the unfolding climate and biodiversity crises. It has not endorsed the proposed Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, a global initiative to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, but more than 100 Catholic institutions have done so. Many parts of the church have divested from fossil fuels and Francis spoke out on the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground – much to the ire of Big Oil. In advance of Cop26 , the UN climate summit held in Glasgow in 2021, the Vatican hosted a meeting of world religious leaders who took a common stand on environment in the hope it would raise ambitions of global leaders. It was attended by 40 faith leaders of the world's major religions and scientists from 20 countries. They called for 'ecological conversion rooted in the common good'. Days before Cop26, on BBC Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day', Francis said only urgent action could 'offer concrete hope to future generations' and called on leaders to 'take radical decisions'. Overall, however, Cop26 was a failure; a call to ' consign coal power to history ' did not happen. Last-minute interventions by China and India weakened the final text. Francis's concern about persistent lack of political will in the run-up to Cop28 in Dubai in 2023 (which he had been due to attend, only to withdraw because of illness), and the fractious global context in which climate was being discussed, led him to double down on his climate message. He published an apostolic letter, Laudate Deum (Praise God), calling out specifically the influence of corporate interests in multilateral processes at Cop summits. 'To say that there is nothing to hope for [at Cop28] would be suicidal, for it would mean exposing all humanity, especially the poorest, to the worst impacts of climate change,' he wrote. His schedule for Dubai was to have included meeting heads of state from small island states who had called for the treaty, an act of solidarity which would have been striking. Robinson was at the launch of Laudato Si', which she described as 'a call for climate justice from one of the most influential moral voices on our planet today'. Before his death she said: 'I have a great admiration for how Pope Francis has managed to speak about climate and nature in a seamless way. It's quite clear he understands we have to value and respect nature as well as climate – and also link it to issues of poverty. His influence has been enormous.' Influenced by writings of Seán McDonagh, Prof John Sweeney, Lorna Gold, Fr Tim Bartlett and others, Irish bishops embraced ecotheology and climate change challenges before most of their confreres. This led to the 2009 pastoral letter The Cry of the Earth. Echoes of this can be seen in Laudato Si'. The bishops called on 'parishes, through their parish pastoral councils and diocesan trusts, as a first step, to identify and care for 30 per cent of parish grounds as a haven for pollinators and biodiversity' – to be enjoyed in perpetuity by 'the whole community', a phrase applied to entire localities, in the interests of a collective humanity and true to the spirit of Laudato Si'.
Bloomberg
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Pope Francis Saw Defending the Climate as an Urgent Priority for the World
When Argentina's Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope in 2013, his vision for human justice and equality was so entwined with nature that he chose the papal name Francis, honoring the patron saint of ecology. That belief, and how passionately he advocated for it, influenced the course of global climate and energy policy and in particular the 2015 Paris Agreement. Francis's 2015 papal letter or encyclical, Laudato Si' ('Praise Be to You'), was the first devoted to global warming. It tied together climate science, wealth inequality, consumption (what he lamented as a 'throwaway culture') and technology in a 40,000-word missive shared with the world's more than 1 billion Catholics. His words could be blunt: 'The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,' he wrote.
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Pope Francis hailed as ‘unflinching global champion' on climate crisis
He declared destroying the environment a sin, warned that humanity was turning the glorious creation of God into a 'polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth', and located the cause of the climate crisis in people's 'selfish and boundless thirst for power'. The messages Pope Francis delivered on the climate and environmental crises were forceful and direct. He called the leaders of fossil fuel companies into the Vatican to hold them to account; declared a global climate emergency, in 2019; and in his final months, held a conference on 'the economics of the common good'. Simon Stiell, the UN's top official on the climate, paid tribute: 'Pope Francis has been a towering figure of human dignity, and an unflinching global champion of climate action as a vital means to deliver it. Through his tireless advocacy, [he] reminded us there can be no shared prosperity until we make peace with nature and protect the most vulnerable, as pollution and environmental destruction bring our planet close to 'breaking point'.' Laurence Tubiana, chief of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the 2015 Paris agreement, wrote on social media that Pope Francis had been an 'important voice': 'By clearly setting out the causes of the crisis we are experiencing, [he] reminded us who the fight against the climate crisis is aimed at: humanity as a whole.' The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, said Pope Francis was 'beacon of global moral strategic leadership' who had guided and inspired her through the 'dark and desolate days' of the Covid pandemic. Describing him as her hero, she recalled spending time with him late last year, where he reinforced in her 'the importance of always aligning our hearts, our heads, and our hands with our faith – to see, hear, and feel all people, so that we may help them, and to protect our planet. 'His voice comforted and inspired many. His hands led him to places where others dared not go, and his heart knew no boundaries. His humour and his laughter were not only infectious but calming. Let us, each and every day, see, hear, and feel people – to fight the globalisation of indifference.' After his appointment in March 2013, Francis quickly took up the climate and environment as key themes of his papacy. 'If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us,' he warned an audience in Rome in May 2014, the year before the Paris agreement was signed. 'Never forget this.' His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had taken steps to green the Vatican with solar panels, and spoken of the sinfulness of environmental destruction. But Francis went further, with a landmark encyclical in 2015. Laudato Si', translated as Praise Be to You, set out in 180 pages his vision of 'climate change [as] a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political', and warned of the 'grave social debt' owed by the rich to the poor, because of it. 'This is his signature teaching,' said Austen Ivereigh, a papal biographer, at the time of the publication. 'Francis has made it not just safe to be Catholic and green; he's made it obligatory.' 'Laudato Si' was a wonderful achievement and vision – an environmentalism of hope and justice that profoundly resonated,' said Edward Davey, head of the UK office of the World Resources Institute. This was followed by a fresh encyclical, Laudate Deum, in October 2023, with even starker warnings, that humanity was taking the Earth 'to breaking point'. Part of what made Francis's words stand out was their clear focus on the social justice aspects of the climate crisis. St Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century Italian friar from whom Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina took his papal name, was known for living among the poor and in close harmony with nature. As Pope, Francis seemed equally determined to bring the two together. 'We have to hear both the cry of the Earth, and the cry of the poor,' he wrote in Laudato Si. Mark Watts, executive director of the C40 Cities group of mayors supporting climate action, said: 'He established for a worldwide audience that the climate crisis is not just an environmental challenge but a profound social and ethical issue, exacerbated by greed and short-term profit seeking, disproportionately affecting the world's most marginalised communities. His leadership highlighted how inequality and the climate crisis are inextricably linked, mobilising community-led climate action.' In Laudate Deum, Francis called for 'a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the western model', and defended protesters, writing: 'The actions of groups negatively portrayed as 'radicalised' … are filling a space left empty by society as a whole, which ought to exercise a healthy 'pressure', since every family ought to realise that the future of their children is at stake.' He was regarded by some as too radical himself – as he noted: '[I have been] obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic church.' This year's UN climate summit, Cop30, will be held in Brazil, in November, and campaigners had been hoping that, despite his increasing frailty, the first ever Latin American pontiff might be able to make it. Few figures of such authority have staked their reputation on the climate crisis, and fewer still have so publicly yoked together social justice with the environment. Stiell said: 'His message will live on: humanity is community. And when any one community is abandoned – to poverty, starvation, climate disasters and injustice – all of humanity is deeply diminished, materially and morally, in equal measure.'
RNZ News
21-04-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Pope Francis: an unconventional pontiff who sought to modernise Catholicism
By Liam Temple * of Francis was a pope of several firsts, Liam Temple writes. Photo: Supplied Analysis: From the moment of his election in 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who became Pope Francis, proved himself to be unconventional. Shedding much of the formality of previous papal elections, he appeared for the first time on the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica in a simple white cassock without the red ermine-trimmed cape, known as a mozzetta, traditionally worn on such occasions. On his chest was the silver pectoral cross he had worn as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rather than the gold cross worn by previous popes. His early demonstrations of unconventionality went beyond his dress as he refused to live in the Apostolic Palace, residing primarily in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse. Pope Francis pictured in November 2017. Photo: AFP He was a pope of other firsts. He took the name, Francis, in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi, becoming the first uniquely named pope in over 1000 years (the last being Pope Lando in 913). Many of his major teachings, known as "papal encyclicals", echoed the wisdom of Saint Francis. For instance, Laudato Si (Praise Be to You, 2015) and Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers and Sisters, 2020), concerning care for the planet and care for each other respectively, drew their inspiration from the saint. "My roots are Italian, but I am Argentinian and Latin American," he insisted in his recent autobiography. It was this background as the first pope from the southern hemisphere, and his upbringing in Argentina, that formed his role as a voice for those on the peripheries of society: migrants, the poor, victims of war and the helpless. Pope Francis prays in the military cemetery of the World War I memorial of Redipuglia, in northeastern Italy, in September 2014. Photo: AFP Such an approach also reflected a diverse new reality within the church. The majority of the 1.36 billion Catholics around the world live outside Europe and North America. He made clear early on that representing this new reality was central to his papacy by making his first official papal visit outside of Rome to the island of Lampedusa in southern Italy, where many migrants and refugees fleeing warfare attempted to land as a route into Europe. Denouncing people trafficking and referring to the 2013 migrant shipwreck that killed over 300 people, Pope Francis would later describe the island as an "underwater cemetery for too, too many corpses". Pope Francis was also the first pope to be formed entirely in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which brought about fundamental changes to how the Catholic church related to wider society and the "modern world". This included the celebration of the Mass in vernacular languages, rather than exclusively Latin. Such formation shaped his attitude on such topics as the role of women in the church, technology and AI, the ongoing ecological crisis and the relationship between Catholicism and other faiths. While the pope had made clear his feelings that "Vatican II" had not yet been fully implemented, his adherence to its ethos has made him unpopular with Catholics who view the changes brought about by the council as misplaced. In 2021, he imposed new restrictions on the use of the older Latin mass, which had been commonplace before the council, now requiring priests to have the permission of their bishop for such a celebration. This reversed the allowances of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who had permitted all priests to say Mass using the Roman Missal of 1962, without bishops permitting them. Pope Francis delivering his message during a live-streamed weekly private audience in the library of the apostolic palace, in The Vatican, released on 28 April, 2021. Photo: AFP / Vatican Media The move was unpopular among many traditionalists who saw the pope as distancing himself from historical tradition. In response, the pope had criticised "those who seek to 'safeguard the ashes' of the past" rather than concerning themselves with the future growth and progress of the church. In many ways, Pope Francis embodied a tension at the heart of Catholicism in the 21st century: too liberal for some Catholics and not liberal enough for others. As such, his attempts at reform necessarily became a fine balancing act. History will undoubtedly judge whether the right balance was struck. His papacy was not without controversy. In May 2024 he apologised for using a derogatory term for gay men in a private meeting with Italian bishops, the remarks splashed on headlines around the world. The episode was particularly shocking as he had previously indicated a shift in the tone of the church's attitude on issues such as blessings for same-sex couples. In 2018, he admitted he made "grave errors" in his handling of clerical abuse cases in Chile. During a visit to the country, he had defended Bishop Juan Barros who stood accused of covering up sexual abuse. The pope cited a "lack of truthful and balanced information" and subsequently invited the victims to Rome to apologise. The pope's funeral and burial will continue his unconventionality. He will forgo the traditional three interlocking caskets of cypress, lead and oak, instead requesting a simple, zinc-lined wooden coffin. He will also be the first pope to be buried outside the Vatican in over a century, asking instead to be buried at Rome's Basilica of St Mary Major. His funeral ceremony will also be simplified and shortened at his request. Such will be the last act of an unconventional pope, for as he states in his autobiography, "the bishop of Rome is a pastor and a disciple, not a powerful man of this world". * Liam Temple is Assistant Professor in the History of Catholicism at Durham University. This article was first published by The Conversation .
