Regional Interfaith Dialogue, Connecting and Cooperating for Peace and Harmony In the Asia-Pacific region
Pope Francis says that carbon pricing is “essential” to stem global warming — his clearest statement yet in support of penalising polluters — and appealed to climate change deniers to listen to science.
In an address to energy executives at the end of a two-day meeting, he also called for “open, transparent, science-based and standardised” reporting of climate risk and a “radical energy transition” away from carbon to save the planet.
The following is a Vatican-provided full translation of Pope Francis’ prepared address given today, June 14, 2019, at the encounter on the theme ‘The Energy Transition and Care for our Common Home,’ promoted by the Vatican’s Dicastery for an Integral Human Development, with world oil executives, held in the Vatican’s Casino IV:
The 17th Anglican Consultative Council, convened last week in Hong Kong, passed an environmental resolution recognizing that there is a global climate emergency and requesting that churches develop action plans and resources for sustainable living.
Read more…Anglican Consultative Council passes environmental resolution
Pope Francis on March 8, 2019, affirmed the importance of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) approved by more than 190 nations in 2015.
Read more…Pope Francis Affirms Importance of Meeting Sustainable Development Goals
On the sidelines of the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, top UN officials, religious leaders and environmental experts underlined the role of faith communities in tackling climate change, a phenomenon that threatens to annihilate humanity. The assembly opened on 11 March against the dark shadow of the Ethiopian Airline plane crash. The plane crashed soon after take-off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 persons on board, including Rev. Norman Tendis, a World Council of Churches (WCC) consultant. He was traveling to Nairobi to participate in an event at the assembly titled “Faith for Earth Dialogue.”
5 July 2018: The Vatican launched an international conference on ecology, marking the third anniversary of Pope Francis’s Encyclical ‘Laudato Sì.’ Political and religious leaders, scientists, economists and civil society organizations (CSOs) discussed ways to increase awareness among the general public on the gravity of the environmental crisis that the world is facing.
“The problems of the destruction of the natural environment are increasingly grave and the consequences on the lives of people are dramatic,” Pope Francis said in a video released November 30, 2017.
The video message was sent to participants in the International Symposium “Laudato si’. Care for the common home, a necessary conversion to human ecology”, organized by the Catholic University of Costa Rica with the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation. The conference runs November 29-December 1, 2017, in San José, Costa Rica.
Read more…Climate Change: Pope Affirms Need to Care for Our Common Home
The United Nations is conducting a Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, under the presidency of Fiji. Pope Francis has renewed his call to action in a message he sent Frank Bainimarama, Prime Minister of the Fiji Islands, President of the 23rd Session of the Conference of States Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-23), taking place in Bonn from November 6-17, 2017. The message was read during the November 16 session.
Organized as part of World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, the World Council of Churches (WCC) invited faith-based organizations, congregations and individuals to their 30 August public event entitled “Water and Faith: Building partnerships to achieve the SDGs”. The event, an open session, was organized by the WCC in collaboration with Church of Sweden, Global Water Partnership, Stockholm International Water Institute, and Swedish Institute Alexandria.
Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople have made a joint appeal on the occasion of the Day of Prayer for the Protection of Creation observed in September 1, 2017. Their appeal is to have the courage to embrace “greater simplicity and solidarity in our lives” to overcome the generalized “moral decay” of humanity, which deteriorates Creation by manipulation, domination, greed and control.
Read more…Environment: Simplicity and Solidarity to Overcome “Moral Decay”