In a shift for the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, who died Monday at 88, was a strong and vocal environmental advocate and used his papacy to help inspire global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

He framed climate change as a spiritual issue, emphasising the connections between global warming, poverty and social upheaval throughout his 12-year leadership. Within the church, taking such a stance was seen by some as unnecessarily injecting politics into church matters.

For environmentalists, the support of Francis was immensely meaningful. In 2015, he penned the first-ever papal encyclical focused solely on the environment. In “Laudato Si,” a sprawling call to action, the pope recognised climate change as both a social and environmental crisis and emphasised that its greatest consequences were shouldered by the poor.

Framing climate change

That year, when 195 nations agreed to the landmark Paris Agreement, a global pact against climate change, at least 10 world leaders made specific reference to the pope’s words during their addresses to the United Nations climate conference.

“Before Pope Francis, climate change was seen either as a political issue or a scientific issue. What his encyclical did was frame it as a spiritual issue,” said Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and the editor-at-large of America Media, a media company with a Catholic perspective.

“He really started from the standpoint that God had created the universe, had created the world and that this was a responsibility of ours — to care for it,” Martin said.

With its publication, “Laudato Si” became a permanent part of official church teaching. It was one of four encyclicals penned during Francis’ tenure. In it, he clearly laid out the consequences of climate change, from loss of biodiversity to water scarcity and the breakdown of society.

“He noted in ‘Laudato Si’ that while humans were creating ‘an immense pile of filth,’ we also had the ability to change course and ‘sing as we go,’” meaning that the struggle should not take away the joy of hope, said Dan Misleh, the founder and executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, a U.S. organisation.

“He was wide-eyed about the challenge but also encouraged us to be hopeful for the future,” Misleh said. Mauricio López Oropeza, a rector and lay vice president of the Amazon Ecclesial Network, who contributed to “Laudato Si,” said the statement reaffirmed that many Catholics were already committed to environmental issues. Others were unconvinced. “I have to say that for the general membership of the church, this was not very well received, and was actually contested in many places,” López Oropeza said.

“Many people resented him framing what they saw as a political issue into a spiritual one,” said Martin, who consulted on parts of “Laudato Si.”

Imploring world to take action

In a follow-up to “Laudato Si” published in 2023, Francis again implored the world to take action

“Once and for all, let us put an end to the irresponsible derision that would present this issue as something purely ecological, ‘green,’ romantic, frequently subject to ridicule by economic interest,” he wrote.

In the exhortation, known as “Laudate Deum,” Francis specifically called out the United States, pointing out that its per-person emissions were twice those of China, and seven times those of the average in the world’s poorest countries.

He called for a broad change in the “irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model.” Francis saw cooperation among governments as key to addressing climate change, and during his time as pope, the Vatican hosted conferences with mayors, religious leaders, money managers and oil companies to find solutions.

The teachings of “Laudato Si” have reverberated with Catholics worldwide. Several Catholic institutions divested from fossil fuels in the years after its publication. One of the most significant expressions of “Laudato Si” has been the church’s work in the Amazon basin, said López Oropeza, who has worked in the region for 12 years.

But the real-world impact of Francis’ climate leadership was “not enough,” as Misleh put it. Since the publication of “Laudato Si,” global emissions have continued to rise, which Misleh said he blames in part on general apathy, especially by people in wealthy nations.

Tributes poured in from global climate leaders Monday morning. John Kerry, who served as President Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate, called Francis “a humanitarian more than anything.” –