ROME — Pope Francis announced Monday he is in the midst of writing a second encyclical letter on the environment following his publication of Laudato Sí in 2015.
“I am currently writing a second part to Laudato Sí in order to address present problems,” the pontiff told a delegation of lawyers from council of Europe member countries.
Francis praised the lawyers for their willingness “to work for the development of a normative framework aimed at protecting the environment,” adding that humanity has “grave responsibilities towards the natural world.”
Pope Francis has been at the forefront of efforts to radically change societal and economic structures to achieve zero carbon emissions in an effort to stave off global warming.
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Last year, the pope declared that the international community must make the “ecological commitment” a top priority, since the planet is getting sick.
“We have not awakened in the face of planetary wars and injustices, we have not listened to the cry of the poor, and of our gravely ill planet,” Francis told the Italian daily Il Mattino. “We thought we would always remain healthy in a sick world.”
“Today a time of trial, a time of choice,” the pope stated. “The time to choose what matters and what doesn’t, to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is time to change course.”
As he has said on other occasions, the pope insisted that it is not enough to fine-tune existing systems, asserting rather that politics and the economy need to be rethought and completely overhauled.
File/Activists display banners calling for action against world poverty, climate change and other environmental issues as they arrive on St. Peter’s square prior to Pope Francis’s Sunday Angelus prayer on June 28, 2015 at the Vatican. (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)
“It is indispensable today for every single person and the entire international community to prioritize the ecological commitment to collective, supportive and far-sighted actions,” he said. “And it is essential that the younger generations do not let their future be stolen by those who preceded them.”
Climate change “has become an emergency that no longer remains at the margins of society,” he asserted two months earlier. “Instead, it has assumed a central place, reshaping not only industrial and agricultural systems but also adversely affecting the global human family, especially the poor and those living on the economic peripheries of our world.”
In 2021, Francis declared that things would never be the same in a post-pandemic world and called for the establishment of a “new world order.”
The pope made stated a case for the Great Reset with a shift away from financial speculation, fossil fuels, and a military build-up toward a green economy based on inclusiveness.
“We can no longer blithely accept inequalities and disruptions to the environment,” he said. “The path to humanity’s salvation passes through the creation of a new model of development, which unquestionably focuses on coexistence among peoples in harmony with Creation.”
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“If we don’t roll up our sleeves and immediately take care of the Earth, with radical personal and political choices, with an economic ‘green’ turn by directing technological developments in this direction, sooner or later our common home will throw us out the window,” he declared.
Similarly, in a 2020 op-ed in the New York Times, the pope said that now “is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of.”
“God asks us to dare to create something new,” he said. “We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor.”