When the encyclical Laudato Si’ (On Care for our Common Home) was released in 2015, I had high hopes that the Catholic Church in the United States would finally embrace environmental justice and care for creation. I remember the morning after its release, expecting to hear a moving homily at daily mass about Pope Francis’ historic message about “integral ecology.” Alas, there was not any mention of it.
Even a decade later, most dioceses in the country still have not prioritized this aspect of Catholic social teaching. At the parish level, many pastors, priests, and deacons avoid addressing care for creation in homilies for fear of alienating “conservative” Catholics. I know of family and friends who reject anything that seems environmentalist.
Meanwhile, climate change continues to impact millions of the poor and vulnerable through drought, flooding, famine, and disease. Unfortunately, with fossil-fuel emissions approaching the limits of sustainability, climate change is becoming increasingly worse—and increasingly ignored in the United States. This includes U.S. bishops, who have remained relatively silent about the issue, despite the urgings of popes and other international leaders.
Now, bishops of the Global South have released a joint appeal for climate action and ecological justice ahead of the COP30 conference in November. “A Call for Climate Justice and the Common Home” was written by bishops from the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC), and the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM), and was coordinated by the Pontifical Commission for Latin America (PCAL). Collectively, they represent over 820 million Catholics in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
In their extraordinary statement, the bishops condemn “false solutions such as ‘green’ capitalism, technocracy, the commodification of nature, and extractivism,” including “opening of new oil wells …and abusive mining in the name of sustainability.” They also put forth demands to address climate injustice that include:
- That rich nations pay their ecological debt to poorer nations and communities affected by resource extraction and climate change, which will total $192 trillion by 2050;
- Phasing out fossil fuels, the primary contributor to climate-changing emissions, “to avoid catastrophic effects” such as even more extreme weather, flooding, drought, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and global famine.
- Economic justice for communities impacted by environmental exploitation, including properly taxing those who have profited from fossil fuels and other resources; and
- Protection of Indigenous peoples and ecosystems, including zero deforestation in five years.
While presenting the document at the Vatican on July 1, Archbishop Spengler of Porto Alegre, Brazil, stated: “There is no climate justice without ecological conversion.…We need to move from consumption to sacrifice, from greed to generosity, from waste to sharing—from ‘I want’ to what God’s world needs.”
Congolese Cardinal Besungu referred to Africa as not “poor” but “looted,” due to exploitation of resources for profit at the expense of its people and the environment. “We say enough is enough—enough of false solutions, enough of decisions made without listening to those on the front lines of climate collapse.”
Such an impassioned plea is well-justified, since 500 million people in the South have already suffered from climate change and other environmental impacts, while having contributed least to the problems. Their populations are primarily poor and don’t consume as many resources or as much energy as countries like the United States, which wastes over 60 percent of its generated power. Moreover, many island nations are at risk of being wiped off the map this century due to sea-level rise brought about by climate change. One of these nations, Vanuatu, won a recent case in the International Court of Justice, which ruled that nations that fail to reduce emissions and alleviate climate change will be liable for damages.
The southern bishops cite climate change as “an existential issue of justice, dignity, and care for our common home.” They urge decision makers to fulfill the Paris Agreement on climate change, a legally binding treaty that nations adopted in 2015 to reduce greenhouse gases and limit global temperatures, and from which the Trump administration has re-withdrawn the United States. In addition, the bishops urge worldwide collaborative efforts toward the common good, human rights and well-being, intergenerational justice, and planetary sustainability. These, they say, must be prioritized over exploitation of nature for economic profit. As Pope Leo XIV observed, “Nature itself is reduced at times to a bargaining chip, a commodity to be bartered for economic or political gain.”
Considering the sociopolitical situation in the United States today, this seems like a tall order, especially since the new administration and Congress are united in opposing climate action. Not only are they halting climate action and continuing business as usual, the United States is now also reversing any momentum enacted by the previous administration: for example, abandoning climate projects, research, and education. Through legislation like the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill,” the United States is super-charging fossil-fuel production and carbon emissions. It is also disseminating climate disinformation, some of which is being consumed by U.S. bishops. Meanwhile, the earth is heading toward a climate tipping point, after which the most severe impacts will become irreversible.
Here in the United States, where is our bishops’ outcry regarding human-caused climate change? Where is their denunciation of political leaders who oppose climate action? Although the USCCB has issued some statements on climate change in recent years, its prioritization of abortion as “pre-eminent” has provided conservative American Catholics justification for ignoring the impacts of climate change on life and the planet. Even after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion has consumed the church’s political bandwidth—despite the fact that climate change has had a greater impact on human life, both born and unborn.
Given the lack of attention by the U.S. Catholic Church to Laudato Si’, Laudate Deum, and other papal statements on ecology and climate, one wonders if the remarkable and desperate plea from the bishops of the Global South will move the needle of U.S. response to the climate crisis. Or will it be, like Laudato Si’ 10 years ago, just one more document in the church archives that millions of Catholics refuse to take to heart?
Given the existential threat that climate change poses to humanity, addressing it is a moral imperative that must be afforded a higher, if not the highest, priority within the U.S. church. Dismissing such an urgent and grave moral issue can arguably be considered a sin of omission. Indeed, short of lying in sackcloth and ashes like the king of Nineveh (Jonah 3:6), it’s time all U.S. bishops call for both prayer and action to alleviate climate change. This action can begin at the parish level, with energy conservation and environmental awareness. Further, with the recent IRS decision allowing churches to endorse candidates, priests and other homilists who choose to get explicitly political must morally consider candidates’ positions on climate change: Do they consider it a “scam,” or do they take it seriously?
The southern bishops’ statement is both timely and compelling. Along with the historic and wise words of Pope Francis and other leaders, it adds to the growing wealth of divinely inspired entreaties urging action on climate change to protect God’s creation that sustains all life. I and others who value creation and life join the southern bishops in continuing to “raise our voice alongside science, civil society, and the most vulnerable, with truth and consistency, until justice is done.” Only in this way can we as a faith community be true to our commitment to uphold the sanctity of life, now and in the future.
Image: Pexels/Wil Carranza
Add comment