(OSV News) Laudate Deum [Praise God], Pope Francis’ latest plea to urgently address global warming and climate change is being hailed by Catholic ecological advocates as “a great call to action.”
Released on October 4, the apostolic exhortation warns that the clock is ticking on the dangers of climate change—and both a paradigm shift and practical strategies are critically needed to avert looming disasters in nature and human society.
In the exhortation, which follows the 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis said, “the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point” due to climate change, “one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community.”
With the global average temperature rapidly rising due to greenhouse gas emissions, extreme weather and dramatic climate shifts have impacted millions, particularly the impoverished, the pope wrote, also lamenting international inertia in reining in emissions.
The new exhortation is “timely,” said Tomás Insua, co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Laudato Si’ Movement, which works through close to 900 member organisations in 115 countries to foster a Catholic approach to the care of the environment.
Insua, who is based in Rome, observed that the pope’s message underscores how “it’s a deeply Christian thing to be concerned for God’s beloved creation [and] … deeply rooted in this very biblical love of creation.”
Laudate Deum relies on “stark language” to convey the grave impact of global warming on weather and climate, said Dan Misleh, founder of the Catholic Climate Covenant, a Washington-based nonprofit that works with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on ecological awareness and advocacy.
“My thoughts are that Pope Francis is heartbroken,” Misleh remarked. “He wrote Laudato Si’ eight years ago. And here we are in 2023 … and he’s saying, ‘We just need to do more. We have no more excuses for inaction.’”
Bith Insua and Misleh say the direct tone of Laudate Deum speaks to people—among them, Catholics—who reject scientific evidence supporting global warming.
‘…the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point” due to climate change, “one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community’
Pope Francis
“The pope is reminding us that what the scientists are telling us is really a crisis,” Insua said. “One of the misleading things about [the term] ‘climate change’ is that ‘change’ is a word that is neutral. It could be positive or negative. … By using the word ‘crisis’ instead of just mere ‘change,’ [Pope Francis] is reminding us that this change is actually very harmful. It’s our most vulnerable, the poorest of our brothers and sisters, and our children and grandchildren who pay the costs most. So we have to take it seriously.”
Pope Francis’ insights align with previous papal calls from Pope St. John Paul II and Pope St. Paul VI for “the importance of our dialogue between faith and science,” which is “a longstanding Catholic tradition,” and for environmental stewardship, Insua said.
“I think part of [the problem] is that it’s not being preached in churches,” Misleh said. “There’s not a lot of good catechesis for the Catholic faithful on these issues. They see this as a distraction or a secondary part of … how to act in their faith. They’re more concerned about other issues.”
Misleh and Insua both highlighted the new exhortation’s emphasis on the need to understand humanity’s rightful role in creation.
He wrote Laudato Si’ eight years ago. And here we are in 2023 … and he’s saying, ‘We just need to do more. We have no more excuses for inaction
Dan Misleh
“It’s a little bit paradoxical that [the pope’s] message here is addressed to all people of goodwill, and the very title of the document is ‘Praise God’,” Insua said.
“Pope Francis is engaging with all people of goodwill, but he’s doing it from a Christian perspective. And in the choice of the title, [he is] putting God squarely in the middle as the point of reference for all of our environmental concern. All these questions are to be firmly grounded in God and reminding ourselves that we are creatures.”
Misleh agreed, saying that as with Laudato Si’, Pope Francis pointed to “three relationships that we need to pay attention to: our relationship with God, our relationship with each other and our relationship with creation. And what Pope Francis is saying is that when any of those three relationships are not tended to, the other two suffer.”
Misleh said the new exhortation’s call was prophetic, evoking the words of the Lord, spoken through Moses, to the ancient Israelites as recorded in Deuteronomy 30:19: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.”
