Erasmus | The pope and climate change

A green wearing white?

The first pontiff from the global South is under pressure to speak out on the planet's future

By B.C. | ROME

COULD Pope Francis become the world's foremost campaigner on global warming? That is certainly the fondest hope (or in a few cases the darkest fear) of a lot of people who are closely involved in deliberations over the planet's future.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, met the pontiff today and shared his mounting concern over the outcome of the Paris summit on climate change in December which is widely seen as the last opportunity for a global deal to manage carbon emissions and set some limit to rising temperatures. Immediately afterwards, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, an important part of the Vatican's intellectual armoury, convened a brainstorming session with the UN secretariat and a gaggle of NGOs, including the New-York based Earth Institute, a study centre which advises the UN on sustainable development: at the Vatican's behest, the agenda included not just climate change but forced migration and human trafficking, a scourge which has been exacerbated by desertification. Afterwards the assembled UN, Vatican and other bigwigs issued a statement affirming that "human-induced climate change is a scientific reality and its decisive mitigation is a moral and religious imperative for humanity."

Elsewhere in the Italian capital, some strident climate-change sceptics from the Heartland Institute, a right-wing American organisation devoted to spreading climate-change scepticism, were urging the Pope not to believe in man-made global warming; the institute insists that claims of a human contribution to heating the planet are unfounded, and that proposals to mitigate climate change amount to "shutting down" the world economy. This offers a hint of the flak that Pope Francis can expect from the religious right, including many Catholics, when he visits America later this year.

One reason for all this activity in an unseasonably rainy Rome is that in a few weeks, Pope Francis will produce an encyclical, the highest level of Vatican pronouncement, on the global environment, and generally on man's relationship to nature. Janos Pasztor, Mr Ban's chief adviser on climate change, predicts that the papal missive will be one of this year's most important statements on the planet's destiny. And indeed, some past papal encyclicals have had an impact on global opinion that went beyond the world's Catholics: for example, Pacem in Terris, written in 1963 by a dying Pope John XXIII, which linked peace with human rights.

The Argentine pontiff gave a hint of his own thinking when, during a recent visit to the Philippines, he said of climate change: "I don't know if it is the only cause but in great part it is man who has slapped nature in the face. We have in a sense taken over nature."

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Vatican-watchers will be combing the encyclical for a more formal presentation of that sentiment. In the earlier stages of Christian engagement with climate change, it was the Orthodox church, and in particular the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, that played a pioneering role. The Church of England has also taken a strong stance on the environment; Richard Chartres, the bishop of London, recently deplored the fact that ever since the financial crash, short-term economic fire-fighting had eclipsed concern for the planet.

The previous Pope, Benedict XVI, made some strong statements about the environment, often linked to his stated belief in the "respect for the human person"; to the ears of secular greens, that sort of talk can appear too focused on the welfare of homo sapiens at the expense of all other forms of life. The challenge for Pope Francis will be to strike a note that sounds authentic to his own followers, including conservative sceptics, while also striking a chord with the remainder of humanity. Doubtless his encyclical will refer to his name-sake and inspiration, Francis of Assisi, who was famous for his bond with animals and with the physical world; but to be convincing, he will have to find a reading of the medieval saint which is tough-minded rather than sentimental.

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