In a shift for the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, who died on Monday at 88, was a strong and vocal environmental advocate and used his papacy to help inspire global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. He framed climate change as a spiritual issue, emphasizing the connections between global warming, poverty and social upheaval throughout his 12-year leadership.
Within the church, taking such a stance was seen by some as unnecessarily injecting politics into church matters. For environmentalists, the support of Francis was immensely meaningful.
In 2015, he penned the first-ever papal encyclical focused solely on the environment. In “Laudato Si,” a sprawling call to action, the pope recognized climate change as both a social and environmental crisis, and emphasized that its greatest consequences were shouldered by the poor.
That year, when 195 nations agreed to the landmark Paris Agreement, a global pact against climate change, at least 10 world leaders made specific reference to the pope’s words during their addresses to the United Nations climate conference.
“Before Pope Francis, climate change was seen either as a political issue or a scientific issue. What his encyclical did was frame it as a spiritual issue,” said the Reverend James Martin, a Jesuit priest and the editor at large of America Media, a media company with a Catholic perspective.
“He really started from the standpoint that God had created the universe, had created the world and that this was a responsibility of ours — to care for it,” Mr. Martin said.
With its publication, “Laudato Si” became a permanent part of official church teaching. It was one of four encyclicals penned during Francis’ tenure. In it, he clearly laid out the consequences of climate change, from loss of biodiversity to water scarcity and the breakdown of society.
“He noted in ‘Laudato Si’ that while humans were creating ‘an immense pile of filth,’ we also had the ability to change course and ‘sing as we go,’” meaning that the struggle should not take away the joy of hope, said Dan Misleh, the founder and executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, a U.S. organization.
“He was wide-eyed about the challenge but also encouraged us to be hopeful for the future,” Mr. Misleh said.
Mauricio López Oropeza, a rector and lay vice president of the Amazon Ecclesial Network, who contributed to “Laudato Si,” said the statement reaffirmed that many Catholics were already committed to environmental issues.
Others were unconvinced. “I have to say that for the general membership of the church, this was not very well received, and was actually contested in many places,” Mr. López Oropeza said.
“Many people resented him framing what they saw as a political issue into a spiritual one,” said Mr. Martin, who said he was involved with writing parts of “Laudato Si.”
In a follow-up to “Laudato Si” published in 2023, Francis again implored the world to take action. “Once and for all, let us put an end to the irresponsible derision that would present this issue as something purely ecological, ‘green,’ romantic, frequently subject to ridicule by economic interest,” he wrote.
In the exhortation, known as “Laudate Deum,” Francis specifically called out the United States, pointing out that its per-person emissions were twice those of China, and seven times those of the average in the world’s poorest countries. He called for a broad change in the “irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model.”
Francis saw cooperation among governments as key to addressing climate change, and during his time as pope, the Vatican hosted conferences with mayors, religious leaders, money managers and oil companies to find solutions.
The teachings of “Laudato Si” have reverberated with Catholics worldwide. Several Catholic institutions divested from fossil fuels in the years after its publication.
One of the most significant expressions of “Laudato Si” has been the church’s work in the Amazon basin, said Mr. López Oropeza, who has worked in the region for 12 years.
But the real-world impact of Francis’ climate leadership was “not enough,” as Mr. Misleh, of Catholic Climate Covenant, put it. Since the publication of “Laudato Si,” global emissions have continued to rise, which Mr. Misleh said he blames in part on general apathy, especially by people in wealthy nations.
Tributes poured in from global climate leaders on Monday morning. “He was deeply involved in trying to figure out how we move on the inequities that come from the climate crisis,” said John Kerry, who served as President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s special envoy for climate, calling Francis “a humanitarian more than anything.”
In a Substack post on Monday, Bill McKibben, a prominent author and climate activist, called Francis “perhaps the world’s greatest environmental champion.”
Mr. López Oropeza said he thought Francis’ climate leadership should be one of the “essential legacies” of his papacy.
“This is one of the most pressing challenges of our time,” he said, adding that it most affected “impoverished communities, and if we don’t respond now, it will be too late.”
Claire Brown covers climate change for The Times and writes for the Climate Forward newsletter.
The post How Pope Francis Helped Inspire the Global Movement Against Climate Change appeared first on New York Times.
