He declared to destroy the environment a sin, warned that humanity transformed the glorious creation of God into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and dirt”, and located the cause of the climate crisis in “selfish and without limits of power”.
The messages that Pope Francis delivered on the climate and environmental crises were energetic and direct. He called the leaders of fossil fuel companies in the Vatican to take them into account; declared a global climate emergency in 2019; And in his last months, organized a conference on “The Economics of the Common Good”.
Simon Stiell, the senior UN official on the climate, paid tribute: “Pope Francis was an imposing figure in human dignity, and a flawless world champion of climate action as a vital means to deliver it. Thanks to his tireless plea, (he) reminded us of the protection and projection of the most vulnerable protection and protection.
Laurence Tubiana, head of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the 2015 Paris Agreement, wrote on social networks that Pope Francis had been an important voice ”: “By clearly putting the causes of the crisis that we live, (he) reminded us who fights the fight against the climate crisis aims to: Humanity as a whole.”
The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, said that Pope Francis was “a lighthouse of world moral strategic leadership” which had guided and inspired her through the “dark and desolate days” of the cocovable pandemic. Describing him as his hero, she recalled that she had spent time with him at the end of last year, where he strengthened in his “importance of always aligning our hearts, our heads and our hands with our faith – to see, hear and feel everyone, so that we can help them and protect our planet.
“Her voice comforted and inspired a lot. His hands led him to places where others dared not go, and his heart did not know borders. His humor and laughter were not only infectious but soothing. Let us, every day, see, hear and feel people – to fight the globalization of indifference. ”
After his appointment in March 2013, Francis quickly took up the climate and the 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 signing of the Paris Agreement. “Never forget that.
His predecessor, Pope Benoît XVI, had taken measures to green the Vatican with solar panels and spoke of the sin of environmental destruction. But Francis went further, with a historic encyclical in 2015. Laudato Si ‘, translated by praise to you, in 180 pages his vision of “climate change (like) a global problem with serious implications: environmental, social, economic, political”, and warned of “serious social debt” due by the rich to the poor, because of that.
“This is his signature teaching,” said Austen Ivereigh, a papal biographer, at the time of publication. “Francis made sure that the Catholic and the green are not only safe; he made him compulsory.”
“Laudato if” was a wonderful achievement and vision – an environmentalism of hope and justice that has deeply resonated, “said Edward Davey, head of the British office of the World Resource Institute.
This was followed by a new encyclical, Laute Deum, in October 2023, with even more starker warnings, that humanity took the earth “at the point of rupture”.
Part of what brought out the words of Francis was their clear objective on the aspects of the social justice of the climate crisis. St Francis d’Assise, the Italian brother of the 13th century, including Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio d’Argentine took his papal name, was known to live among the poor and in close harmony with nature.
As a pope, Francis also seemed determined to bring together the two. “We must 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 global public that the climate crisis is not only an environmental challenge, but a deep social and ethical problem, exacerbated by greed and the search for short -term profits, affecting the most marginalized crux of the world. Mobilize climate action led by the community. »»
In Laudate Deum, Francis called for “a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle linked to the Western model”, and defended the demonstrators, writing: “The actions of the groups negatively described as” radicalized “… fill an empty space by society as a whole, which must exert a healthy” pressure “.
He was considered by some as too radical himself – as he noted: “(I was) forced to make these clarifications, which may seem obvious, because of certain disdainful and barely reasonable opinions that I meet, even in the Catholic Church.”
The United Nations Summit on the Climate of this year, COP30, will be held in Brazil in November, and the activists hoped that, despite its growing fragility, the very first Latin American pontift could be able to do so. Few figures for such authority have put their reputation on the climate crisis, and less have still so publicly fired social justice with the environment.
Stiell said: “His message will live: humanity is a community. And when a community is abandoned – for poverty, famine, climatic disasters and injustice – all humanity is deeply reduced, materially and morally, at equal extent.”
