In his inaugural major statement on climate change, Pope Leo XIV passionately urged Catholics and global citizens alike to embrace the environmental mission championed by his predecessor, Pope Francis. He stressed the importance of approaching ecological care not as a contentious debate, but as a unifying cause for humanity.
Addressing the opening ceremony of a significant climate conference, Pope Leo marked the tenth anniversary of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical on environmental stewardship. He affirmed that the urgent environmental challenges highlighted in the document are “even more pressing today than they were a decade ago.”
From the historic papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, located approximately 17 miles southeast of the Vatican, Pope Leo spoke for just over ten minutes. Sharing the stage with notable figures such as actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brazil’s climate minister, his address emphasized the critical role of individuals and local communities in mitigating the escalating pressures of climate change.
He asserted that “every segment of society, from non-governmental organizations to grassroots advocacy groups, must exert pressure on governments to devise and enforce more stringent environmental regulations, procedures, and oversight.” He continued, highlighting the necessity for citizens to “actively participate in political decision-making processes at national, regional, and local tiers. This collective engagement is the only pathway to effectively mitigate the environmental damage currently unfolding.”
This powerful address underscored the new Pope’s unwavering commitment to maintaining climate change as a central theme in global discourse.
Elected in May as the first American pontiff, Pope Leo XIV has generally adopted a cautious stance on various contentious matters. However, his most compelling remarks yesterday directly invoked the profound wisdom of Pope Francis. He posed a crucial question: “How can we now ensure that the stewardship of our shared planet, and heeding the cries of both the Earth and the impoverished, transcends fleeting trends and, more importantly, avoids becoming a source of contention and division?” This question powerfully echoed some of Francis’s most iconic pronouncements.
Delivering his speech just over a week after former President Trump controversially dismissed climate change as the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at the United Nations General Assembly, Pope Leo carefully avoided any direct critiques of specific national leaders or their policies.
Nevertheless, during his address, Pope Leo directly referenced Francis’s 2023 follow-up to Laudato Si’. This update, he recalled, “lamented how some individuals have chosen to mock the escalating evidence of climate change, to ‘ridicule those who speak of global warming,’ and even unjustly scapegoat the poor for the very environmental crises that disproportionately impact them.”
Pope Francis consistently presented climate change as a profound spiritual and moral imperative for the Roman Catholic Church’s 1.4 billion adherents, frequently highlighting how the world’s most vulnerable populations bear the brunt of global warming’s devastating consequences.
Just last month, Pope Leo introduced a new Mass rite dedicated to “imploring God for the wisdom to safeguard creation.” In this context, he spoke forcefully about how “injustice, disregard for international law and human rights, severe global inequalities, and the insatiable greed driving these forces are collectively accelerating deforestation, widespread pollution, and the alarming loss of Earth’s precious biodiversity.”
The actual impact of the papal voice on tangible climate action, however, remains a subject of ongoing debate. In 2015, during the United Nations climate summit that culminated in the historic Paris Agreement, at least ten world leaders referenced Pope Francis’s pronouncements. The Paris Agreement, a landmark accord, saw nations commit to curbing global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Francis himself had previously engaged in national politics, famously presenting former President Trump with a copy of Laudato Si’ in 2017 and earnestly appealing to him to keep the United States within the Paris climate accord. Despite this direct plea, Mr. Trump ultimately withdrew the nation from the agreement.
Pope Francis openly expressed his disappointment that his efforts did not lead to more decisive action. In his 2023 follow-up to Laudato Si’, he voiced profound regret over the sluggish pace of progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions since his initial encyclical was published.
As world leaders and climate advocates gear up for the upcoming 30th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference in Brazil, alarming indicators persist: the planet continues to warm, causing catastrophic impacts for millions globally. During the conference, Brazil’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, speaking before the Pope, stated bluntly that the commitments outlined in the Paris Agreement “have largely gone unfulfilled and unenforced, despite the unequivocal warnings from the scientific community.”
She emphasized, “What is urgently required now is the ethical resolve to honor these commitments, ensuring the well-being of both current and future generations, with particular focus on protecting the most vulnerable and marginalized communities.”
The World Meteorological Organization reported that 2024 stood as the warmest year in its 175-year history of record-keeping. Furthermore, extreme weather events during that year triggered the highest annual displacement of people since 2008.
In the United States, former President Trump’s administration notably dismantled climate research laboratories and froze renewable energy initiatives. Simultaneously, major economies like China, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia have expanded their coal power production since 2020. Alarmingly, only a third of the nations that signed the Paris Agreement have submitted updated climate commitments.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a close environmental advisor to Pope Francis and the current head of the Vatican ministry focused on climate issues, noted that the current polarized geopolitical climate significantly obstructs collaborative climate action.
Speaking during an interview at the Vatican on Wednesday morning, Cardinal Czerny lamented, “It’s profoundly challenging to envision how we can confront global issues, even those with localized origins and impacts, when multilateral cooperation is severely fractured. Our collective ability to work together is, in my view, rapidly eroding.”
He voiced concern that the upcoming United Nations conference could devolve into a mere “charade.”
Despite these discouraging signs of regression, environmental activists and certain climate scientists retain hope that the Pope’s moral leadership could still galvanize meaningful progress.
Piers Forster, a professor of climate physics at the University of Leeds in England and former chairman of a British government climate advisory board, acknowledged, “Naturally, we won’t resolve this issue overnight.” He added optimistically, “However, every small action and every significant declaration from an influential figure like Pope Leo has the potential to steer populations and nations toward the necessary path forward.”
Additional reporting for this article was provided by Josephine de La Bruyère from Rome and Castel Gandolfo.