Pope Francis on Sunday—when Hurricane Dorian began pounding the Bahamas with record strength—urged the world to heed calls made by rising youth and indigenous peoples to take swift action to address the climate crisis and thereby ensure “our common future.”
“We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own,” the pontiff said.
The pope’s plea came in his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, an annual celebration he called for in 2015.
In the new message, the pope denounced human exploitation of the environment and pointed to increasingly frequent extreme weather and water scarcity as well as “constant pollution, the continued use of fossil fuels, intensive agricultural exploitation, and deforestation [that] are causing global temperatures to rise above safe levels.”
“In this ecological crisis affecting everyone,” the pope continued, “we should also feel close to all other men and women of good will, called to promote stewardship of the network of life of which we are part.”
The appeals for action—including ditching fossil fuels—were addressed at individuals and political leaders. He wrote:
While the pope didn’t mention by name the Fridays for Future and School Strike for Climate movement, he made note of the young people “calling for courageous decisions.” He said they remind all that Earth is “an inheritance to be handed down” and, in a possible reference to teen activist Greta Thunberg, said that “hope for tomorrow is not a noble sentiment, but a task calling for concrete actions here and now.”
Addressing political leaders, he said, “Let us say ‘no’ to consumerist greed and to the illusion of omnipotence, for these are the ways of death.” Instead, said Pope Francis, leaders should undertake “farsighted processes involving responsible sacrifices today for the sake of sure prospects for life tomorrow.”
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