CLIMATE CHANGE

For more than a year, Pope Francis and his close advisors have been preparing an environmental stewardship document called Laudato Si. The text focuses on the effects of climate change on human life.

The document has been issued in the form of an encyclical, one of the most formal statements the pope can make about Catholic doctrine, and it’s the first of his papacy. Last spring, he released another piece of writing on the topic of poverty, but it was a slightly less formal document called an apostolic exhortation.

This, however, is the first instance in which the environment has been the topic of an encyclical. No pontiff has ever issued a statement (about the environment) on this level. John Paul may have put it into a World Day of Peace message, but a World Day of Peace message is down the rung on the ladder of the hierarchy of Catholic documents. Benedict, too, gave a number of homilies and speeches on it, but never at this level.

In the document, the pope makes a strong case that humans are at fault for the degradation of the environment. ‘Numerous scientific studies indicate that the major part of global warming in recent decades is due to the high concentration of greenhouse gas … emitted above all because of human activity,’ he writes. His thinking on the environment connects with other major themes of his papacy, including care for the poor and the importance of human life. In the document, he writes that the heaviest impacts of climate change ‘will probably fall in the coming decades on developing countries. Many poor people live in areas particularly affected by phenomena related to heating, and their livelihoods strongly depend on natural reserves and so-called ecosystem services, such as agriculture, fisheries, and forestry.’ The effects on immigrants and refugees are also discussed: changing environmental conditions force them into a position of economic uncertainty in which livelihoods can’t be sustained, he says.

We should know that this encyclical is not a love letter to Greenpeace or any other environmental lobby group. Whilst Francis is embracing the idea of environmental stewardship, he’s doing so as a Catholic theologian, not a liberal activist. In America, the pope’s encyclical is being discussed in terms of U.S. politics, where a significant minority of most Republican voters and legislators deny the existence of climate change. Rick Santorum, a Catholic and former U.S. senator and presidential candidate, advised the pope to ‘leave science to the scientists and focus on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.’

Francis links his call for environmental stewardship to the Book of Genesis, and he repeatedly couches environmental degradation in theological language. ‘That human beings destroy the biological diversity in God’s creation; that human beings compromise the integrity of the earth and contribute to climate change, stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; that human beings pollute the water, soil, air; all these are sins,’ he says.

American Catholics may be a sizeable group, but they form a small contingent on the whole of Francis’s church. There are 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, and nearly 40 percent of them live in South America. Sub-Saharan Africa is another area of rapid growth for the Church; demographers expect the number of Christians in the region to double by 2050 to nearly 1.1 billion, although some of those will be Protestants. Considering that Latin America and Africa are Francis’s two biggest ‘constituencies,’ it’s no wonder that the environment is a point of pressing concern for the global Church. Climate change affects those who are poor and live in developing countries much more intensely than those who live in the developed world. In coming out against climate change, Francis is continuing the theme and focus of his entire papacy – speaking for the world’s poor.

Related

• Food, hunger and undernourishment…