The “green pope” denounced the scale of emissions from high-consumption cultures and argued that the world’s poor were paying the price.
VATICAN CITY — Warning that “the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” Pope Francis issued a renewed call for climate action Wednesday, singling out the United States for “irresponsible” Western excess and decrying the “weakness” of world leaders for failing to take bold steps.and called for an “ecological conversion” among the faithful, Francis released a follow-up, known as an apostolic exhortation.
While criticizing the United States, Francis also made a point to praise U.S. bishops for aptly expressing that “our care for one another and our care for the earth are intimately bound together” — though that quote from the, who saw him as helping to build momentum for what would become the sweeping Paris Accords to curb global emissions, adopted in December of that year.
He continued: “To the powerful, Pope Francis dares to repeat this question: ‘Why do you want to preserve today a power that will be remembered for its inability to intervene when it was urgent and necessary to do so?’”But Francis’s positions on climate change no longer offer much surprise, and he may not have as captive an audience as he did earlier in his papacy.
In the new document, Francis focused on what he described as a broken multilateral system for global decision-making and avoided calling on Catholics to take specific steps to combat climate change.found that a call by Catholic bishops in England and Wales to reinstate the old practice of not eating meat on Fridays had a significant impact on behavior and saved the equivalent of 55,000 metric tons of carbon emissions over a year.Catholic views are mixed on Francis’s climate efforts.
“It is safe to say that many Catholics still do not view care for the environment as a central aspect of what it means to be a Catholic,” said David Cloutier, a professor of moral theology at Catholic University. “They view it as an optional activity that some Catholics might be involved in on the side, not a central commitment. But Pope Francis clearly is trying to move the church in that direction.
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