Tag Archives: God’s Creation

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: 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.