Pope Leo XIV has lashed out at those who according to him, minimise the “increasingly evident” impact of rising temperatures in his first major statement on climate change.
The Pope was speaking at a conference to mark 10 years since the publication of Laudato Si’.
Reiterating the words of his predecessor Pope Francis, the new pontiff lambasted critics who “ridicule those who speak of global warming”. The Pope’s remarks, at a speech in Castel Gondolfo near Rome, will be seen as an implied criticism of US President Donald Trump, who last month called climate change a “con”.
Pope Leo also called for greater action from citizens the world over on climate change, saying there was no room for indifference or resignation.
That landmark document, written by his predecessor Pope Francis, made the issue of climate a central part of the church’s concerns. Many credit it for helping set the tone that led to the Paris climate agreement in 2015.
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But the new Pope, who was elected in May, was worried that the question of climate change was now becoming more divisive. Referring to his predecessor’s writings, he said: “Some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming, and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them the most.”
Just two weeks ago at the UN General Assembly in New York, US President Donald Trump criticised the climate movement as the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, and rebuffed the use of renewable energy.
“The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction,” he said.
Pope Leo, the first pontiff born in the US, has previously clashed with Trump’s White House on issues including migration and national security. In Wednesday’s speech, the Pope called for people all over the world to put increased pressure on politicians.
Citizens need to take an active role in political decisions, he said, as “only then will it be possible to mitigate the damage done to the environment”. The Pope said that each of us will have to answer a question from God.
“God will ask us if we have cultivated and cared for the world that he created for the benefit of all and for future generations, and if we have taken care of our brothers and sisters – what will be our answer, my dear friends?”
The Raising Hope conference was held just over a month from the start of COP30 in Belém, in Brazil.
World leaders and climate diplomats will meet in the Amazonian city as efforts to tackle rising emissions of planet warming gases have fallen down the political agenda.
Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva invited the Pope to COP30 on behalf of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“I am convinced in this way His Holiness will make an indispensable contribution so that COP30 may go down in history as the great moment of implementation,” she said.
Today’s meeting also heard from former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said the Pope was a real world “action hero”, as he had committed to putting solar panels on all the Vatican’s buildings.
Story was adapted from BBC.
