He Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged the countries participating in the negotiations of the United Nations on the climate to take “concrete measures” to stop the climate change that threatens the planet, telling them that humans are failing in their response to global warming and that God’s creation “is crying out with floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat”.
In a video message played to religious leaders gathered in Belem, Leo said the nations had made progress, “but not enough.”
“One in three people lives in great vulnerability due to these climate changes”Leo stated. “To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity.”
His message came as talks entered their second week, with high-level ministers from governments around the world arriving on the edge of the Brazilian Amazon to join the negotiations. Monday was dominated by speeches, in which several leaders from countries in the Global South offered emotional testimonies about the devastating costs of recent natural and extreme climate disasters.
Vulnerable nations have pushed for more ambition in these talks, as world leaders have begun to recognize that the Earth will almost certainly exceed the expected limit: 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warming of the Earth since pre-industrial times. That was the goal set in these talks in 2015 in the historic Paris agreement.
Scientists say that in addition to the deadly heat, the warming atmosphere is causing more frequent and deadly extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, violent downpours and more powerful hurricanes.
Leo said there is still time to stay within the Paris Agreement, but not much.
“As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to act quickly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift He entrusted to us,” he said. And he added: “But we must be honest: it is not the Agreement that is failing, we are failing in our response. What is failing is the political will of some.”
Leo made history this year by becoming the first American pope, and has embraced Pope Francis’ environmental legacy, including rejecting climate skeptics.
The United States, the world’s second largest polluter, skips the conference. US President Donald Trump called climate change “the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the world” during a speech to the UN General Assembly in September.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell said Leo’s words “challenge us to continue choosing hope and action.”
Leo “reminds us that the Paris Agreement is making progress and remains our most powerful tool, but we must work together to achieve more, and that bolder climate action is an investment in stronger, fairer economies, and a more stable world,” Stiell said.
David Gibson, director of the Center for Religion and Culture at Fordham University in New York, said León is becoming the world’s foremost moral leader against climate change.
“This message positions Leo as a spokesperson for the rest of the world, especially the southern hemisphere, where climate change is wreaking havoc on the most vulnerable in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” Gibson said.
And he said it shows that Leo, who spent decades working as a missionary in Peru and is a naturalized Peruvian citizen, “has a Latin American heart and voice.”
The Laudato Si’ Movement, a Catholic climate movement that takes its name from a 2015 encyclical in which Pope Francis called for climate action, called León’s message a “profound moral intervention.”
“It reminds the world that creation is crying out and that vulnerable communities cannot be left aside. “Its voice breaks through the noise of negotiations and calls leaders back to what really matters: our shared humanity and the urgent duty to act with courage, compassion and justice,” said the group’s executive director, Lorna Gold.