While “creation is crying out” and millions of people suffer the effects of climate change and pollution, politicians are failing to act, Pope Leo XIV has told Christian activists. Source: CNS.
As the United Nations Climate Conference, COP30, began its final week of meetings this week, the Pope sent a video message to Christian representatives and activists from the global south who were holding a side event to the conference in Belem, Brazil.
The Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 at COP21 “has driven real progress and remains our strongest tool for protecting people and the planet,” Pope Leo said in the video.
“But we must be honest: it is not the agreement that is failing, we are failing in our response,” he said. “What is failing is the political will of some.”
While Pope Leo did not specify which nations were at fault, the United States was not represented at COP30 because President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the Paris Agreement.
“True leadership means service, and support at a scale that will truly make a difference,” the Pope said. “Stronger climate actions will create stronger and fairer economic systems. Strong climate actions and policies – both are an investment in a more just and stable world.”
“Creation is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat,” Pope Leo said.
“One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes,” he added. “To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity.”
As government representatives from most of the world’s countries struggled to finalise agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on fossil fuels, Pope Leo told Christian activists he believed “there is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius, but the window is closing”.
“As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to act swiftly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift he entrusted to us,” he said.
In safeguarding creation as a gift of God, he said, “we walk alongside scientists, leaders and pastors of every nation and creed.”
“We are guardians of creation, not rivals for its spoils,” the Pope said. “Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and behind climate cooperation.”
FULL STORY
‘Creation is crying out,’ Pope says in new message to COP30 (By Cindy Wooden, CNS)
