Tag Archives: Pope Francis

Mongabay: Pope Francis’ uncompromising defense of nature may be his greatest legacy

Pope Francis was very much a man of the people while traveling to 68 countries during his pontificate. At least once a week while in Rome, he would cruise around St. Peters Square to greet pilgrims and tourists who had come to visit Vatican City, like this encounter in June 2016. Photo by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

This story is one I was both sad and eager to write. Sad because of the death of Pope Francis at 88, one of the most extraordinary leaders of the global Catholic Church in generations; eager because Francis in a very tangible way brought me to Mongabay; I’ve been covering for the past decade his ceaseless crusade to implore people of all faiths to protect “God’s creation” and fight climate change we are all making worse.

In 2015, I had recently pivoted from local news reporting to international environmental reporting after a nudge and plenty of inspiration from my friend and colleague Miles Silman, a leading tropical ecologist at Wake Forest University, where we both teach. That summer, while I was teaching a summer session for Wake students in Rome, I was contacted by Jon Sawyer, founder and then CEO of the Pulitzer Center, with an offer to travel to Latin America — home ethnic home of Pope Francis — and evaluate whether people there (overwhelmingly Catholic) were apt to listen to and follow his teachings in Laudato Si, a Catholic teaching document of the highest order, and the first focused exclusively on climate change, environmental degradation and humankind’s heavy hand in destroying the planet. The encyclical made global headlines, inspired environmental activism and incited a growing number of enemies. It’s spirit is woven throughout the preamble of the historic Paris Agreement on climate change of 2015.

I said yes to Jon Sawyer’s offer and chose to report from all over Peru for three weeks. Enrique Ortiz, my friend and Peruvian biologist, agreed to be my fixer, and my oldest daughter Emilia came along for two of those weeks as my photographer. The stories I produced enabled me to make a real pitch to Mongabay founder and editor-in-chief Rhett Butler. He agreed to take my stores, assigned Glenn Scherer to be my editor, and Glenn and I have been working together ever since.

When the pope died on April 21, 2025, at the Vatican the day after Easter, Glenn and I spoke soon after. Given the many stories I’ve written on Francis and the intersection between faith and climate action over the years, Glenn urged me to put together a reflection on Francis’ environmental legacy. I agreed, leaning heavily on the pope’s own words and exhortations among three pioneering documents since 2015.

Except: This singular leadership will surely be a lasting part of his legacy, as his words continue spreading like soft ripples across the Earth he loved. “There is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face,” Francis wrote. “The world sings of an infinite Love: how can we fail to care for it?”

In 2015’s *Laudato Si’*, Pope Francis wrote about our responsibility to each other and to the planet, with much of his inspirational language later woven into the preamble of the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement. In 2023’s *Laudate Deum*, he urged world leaders to take decisive action on climate change, before the planet reaches “the point of no return.” Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Mongabay: Ahead of COP28, pope spurs policymakers, faith leaders to push climate action

The Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Reports from inside the Vatican say that Pope Francis is considering attending COP28. If he attends, Francis would be the first pope to do so since the COP climate summits were initiated in Berlin in 1995. Image courtesy of the Vatican.

This story is a follow up to my breaking news story in early October regarding Pope Francis‘ spirited addendum to his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si in defense of planet earth. In his concise, 13-page letter to “people of all faiths,” the pope makes clear his grave disappointment in leaders of the industrialized world to act with urgency to combat the accelerating climate crisis.

My goal with the follow up story, planned in consultation with my Mongabay editor Glenn Scherer, was to interview a range of sources in religious climate activism, theologians and climate policy makers. The timing of the new papal letter, called Laudate Deum, is clearly designed to challenge the national leaders who will meet in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in early December for the 28th United Nations climate summit. My sources weighed in not only the Francis’ new criticisms and exhortations but also described a faith-based movement for climate action that emerged after the 2015 Paris Agreement in decline and disarray.

My first call was to the Rev. Fletcher Harper, executive director of New York City-based GreenFaith, whom I first met in Paris at the 21st climate summit, and who has been a good source ever since.

“Most religious organizations and leaders, with few exceptions, are not doing enough,” Harper told me. “Once-a-year sermons are not enough. Building gardens behind your church or temple or mosque are not enough. We need people willing to stand up to governments and major financial institutions and say: ‘You are destroying the planet. And you have to stop.’ ”

Other sources weighed in thoughtfully about the pope’s moral authority, the struggle for climate action in Latin America, and the need for a moral compass in the upcoming climate negotiations. It’s a lot. And this pope is once again doing what no other global leader is doing with such clarity. With time running out to slow the rate of global warming and thus head off even worse impacts from climate change, the question remains: are people listening?

*The Rev. Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal pastor and executive director of New York City-based* GreenFaith, a religious climate-action group with chapters worldwide. He plans to be at COP28. Image courtesy of GreenFaith.

Mongabay: Pope Francis condemns world leaders for deeply flawed UN climate process

*Pope Francis, spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics around the world, has long been a defender of the environment and all its biodiversity, like his namesake, St. Francis. Photo by Visualhunt*

I learned in early September from a close friend and good Catholic that Pope Francis would release an addendum to Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home. That historic and landmark encyclical on the defense of the planet, excoriated the greed, consumption and bad policy decisions that were driving climate change and damaging “God’s creation.” I knew immediately that I would be returning to a favorite beat of mine, the intersection of faith and climate action. With Laudate Deum, just 13 pages (compared to 180 pages in Laudato Si), Francis emerges again as perhaps the strongest, most authoritative voice in the world for aggressive environmental protection while unsparingly identifying those who are standing in the way.

This story here reports the breaking news from the document, release October 4 by the Vatican on the Catholic feast day of St. Francis, the pope’s nature-loving namesake. I will follow soon with an in-depth global reaction to Laudate Deum and an analysis of how faith leaders are — and are not — meeting the pope’s challenge to protect natural places, reduce consumption and pushback against political leaders who seek to enrich themselves and their allies at the expense of their communities, the poor and the planet itself.

From Laudate Deum, the pope writes: “Eight years have passed since I published the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, when I wanted to share with all of you, my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet, my heartfelt concerns about the care of our common home. Yet, with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”

“We can do this, if we act now,” reads a slogan at COP26, the climate summit in Glasgow, UK in 2021. Year-after-year world leaders, their national representatives, cadres of fossil fuel industry lobbyists, and climate activists fly to remote urban locales to try and influence climate negotiations that since the 2015 Paris agreement have yielded little forward motion. Meanwhile, surges in carbon emissions, fossil fuel subsidies, and dangerous climate impacts continue apace. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Mongabay: Pope makes impassioned plea to save the Amazon — will the world listen?

Pope Francis meets Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, a member of the Curripaco indigenous community, during a session of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon at the Vatican, October 8, 2019. Image courtesy of CNS photo/Vatican Media.

On February 12, 2020, with a letter to “all persons of good will,” Pope Francis sought to reclaim the mantle of global environmental leadership he established in mid-2015. That’s when he the released of the first-ever papal encyclical (Catholic teaching document of the highest order) on environmental protection and climate change — Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home.

My story for Mongay here picks up that thread with Dear Amazon, a papal letter in response to the first-ever Vatican meeting in October 2019 to focus on a specific region of the planet — Amazonia. While topics at the so-called synod focused largely on environmental protection and the rights of the indigenous peoples who live in those jungles, the mainstream coverage of Francis’ letter focused almost solely on his decision to not allow priests to marry who agree to serve in the dramatically underserved Amazon regions spread across eight countries.

This left an opening for me to write a kind of exclusive about the pope’s environmental and social justice message, which makes up the vast majority of Dear Amazon. The story idea was pitched to me by my inimitable editor Glenn Scherer. I was glad for the opportunity.

Pope Francis at the opening Mass for the Amazon synod October 6, 2019. The administration of President Jair Bolsonaro was highly critical of the synod, seeing it as interference with Brazil’s internal affairs. Image by Daniel Ibanez / CNA.

Mongabay: Interfaith leaders step up to protect the world’s ‘sacred’ rainforests

Seventy percent of the world’s remaining rain forests are in five countries: Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Indonesia and Colombia. Photo by Rhett Butler of mongabay.com

At the close of the UN Climate Summit in December 2018 in Poland, United General Secretary Antonio Guterres was so discouraged by the lackluster outcome that he told world leaders that he would admonish them to increase their urgency and ambition for climate mitigation during Climate Week in New York City (Sept. 23-27, 2019).

Guterres is not alone. Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, in her inimitable way, has inspired millions of school-age children around the world to organize and rally to demand that world leaders treat global warming at the existential crisis that more and more scientists are finding it is.

Add to that an emerging group of faith leaders — the Interfaith Rainforest Iniative (IRI) — that aims to use its moral clout and power in numbers to pressure national leaders to enact policies to slow, reverse and stop deforestation in five tropical countries, as my latest Mongabay story describes.

This kind of religious political lobbying comes with challenges and obstacles, as I explain. But here’s the goal:

“This isn’t about churches planting trees,” said Joe Corcoran, IRI program manager with UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme. “We want to say clearly and definitively to world leaders: religious leaders take this issue of forests and climate very seriously, and they are going to be holding public officials accountable to make sure these issues are addressed.”

Mongabay: Pope’s message to Amazonia inspires hope, but will it bring action?

Indigenous people from the jungles of Peru line up in Puerto Maldonado to see Pope Francis. Photo by Luis Fernandez

My story here about the visit of Pope Francis to the Peruvian Amazon city of Puerto Maldonado was historic in every sense. It was the pope’s first visit to Amazonia, a region of South America the size of the continental United States. While he spoke largely about conservation of the Amazon’s great and important ecosystems, he mostly gave voice and inspiration to the forgotten, oppressed and shoved-aside peoples who live in those far-off places — the rightful owners of the land, the indigenous tribes of multiple nationalities.

Pope Francis clearly called on the Catholic Church of South America to live up to and live out the promise of his encyclical, Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home, and called on the tribes for their guidance. This is a critical time for church leaders to step up, as my story discusses.

The pope greeting the people in the streets of Puerto Maldonado. Photo by Luis Fernandez

Mongabay: People of all faiths face climate change with hope, action, urgency

Two years after Pope Francis launched Laudato Si, the Vatican’s plea to save the earth, Trump rejected its tenets and the Paris Agreement. But people of all faiths are unified globally to beat climate change. Here’s my story in Mongabay. Thanks to editor Glenn Scherer for assigning this follow-up to a series of related stories I wrote from Rome, Peru and Paris in 2015-16.

WFDD: Across the Blue Ridge — Emmylou and the Lampedusa concert tour to support global refugees

Good friend and former NPR anchor Paul Brown is back in Winston-Salem producing

Emmlyou Harris and me in Rome, Italy, June 2016

Across the Blue Ridge, a weekly music program of traditional mountain music. Paul and I worked together years ago when he was the news director at WFDD. When I told him last spring about my opportunity to meet Emmylou Harris and report on her desire to raise money for the Jesuit Refugee Service through a U.S. acoustic concert tour, he advised: “Get some sound. Let’s do a story for Across the Blue Ridge.” I did. Paul produced a beautiful 20-minute segment of three Emmylou classics with an interview with me about her after the first song, Orphan Girl.

Here’s the link on Soundcloud.

Mongabay: Top Vatican official: climate change action is a “moral imperative”

From my Mongabay.com interview with Cardinal Peter Turkson, who oversaw the writing of Laudato Si, and who may well succeed Francis as pope: “[A]t the time Pope Francis took over, the church had a lot of very serious challenges. It’s not that they’ve all gone away. Pedophilia [among priests] was at its raging height. Ok? And a whole lot of accusations and all of that. The church Pope Francis inherited had a lot of bruises. It’s not that the bruises are gone. But his own sense of leadership, simplicity, authenticity, credibility have helped to shove a whole of this bad stuff into the background.”

Thus, he said, climate change can take center stage. The full story is here. The Q&A comes from an hour-long interview I had with him exclusively at his Vatican reception room. I took the photo above months earlier during the press conference at the Vatican in mid-June when Laudato Si was released.

Mongabay: The Paris climate talks ended in elation — now the real work begins, say Faith leaders

Statue at the entrance to Le Bourget Airport near Paris, honoring Charles Lindbergh, the first to solo the Atlantic, and Frenchmen Charles Nungesser and François Coli, who attempted the crossing two weeks earlier and disappeared without a trace. Each day during the Paris climate change conference, participants passed by the statue — a tribute to the Lindbergh Moment, which resonated with many COP21 attendees. [Cutline by Glenn Scherer]

Glenn Scherer, my exemplary editor at mongabay.com sums up my “faith community’s moment” story this way: The story link is here.

Catholic Pope Francis, with his climate change encyclical, and Islamic leaders with their Declaration on Climate Change, both helped to rally their billions of followers to set the stage for a successful Paris climate agreement.
Now, the world over, Faith leaders are discussing and debating the best strategies and tactics for avoiding climate chaos, adapting to global warming, and protecting the world’s poorest and must vulnerable from continuing environmental degradation.
“This is the moment the spirit is trying to work. We need to be there, in all corners of the world, to carry out the message as best we can. We believe in it. We believe in it!” — Sister Sheila Kinsey