Pope Francis praised the “historic” agreement reached at the climate change summit in Paris and called for a global commitment to implement it, including special attention to the poorest nations. “Its implementation will require unanimous commitment and generous dedication by everyone,” said the pontiff after his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square. The international community should “pay special attention to the most vulnerable populations” and “to carefully follow the road ahead, and with an ever-growing sense of solidarity.”
The deal, signed by 195 nations, is to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by about half of what will be necessary to stave off an increase in atmospheric temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The partly legally binding agreement will take effect in 2020.
While recent popes have discussed their concerns about climate change, Pope Francis has made it a cornerstone of his pontificate and has strongly pushed for action. He released an unprecedented encyclical in June, Laudato Si, addressed to everyone on the planet, not just the Catholic faithful. Linking the Catholic Church with secular scientists he strongly called for protection of the climate in an epic appeal to global leaders and people.
The pope then summoned 60 big city mayors to the Vatican to discuss climate change, hoping to develop a grass-roots campaign to pressure world leaders to act on the environment.
The pope also spoke to the general assembly of the United Nations in September, the largest gathering of world leaders in history, and blamed environmental degradation on “a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity” that causes untold suffering for the poor who “are cast off by society.”
Then in November, just days before the opening of the Paris summit on November 30, Francis said that a failure to have a suitable agreement in Paris would be “catastrophic.” “It would be sad, and I dare say even catastrophic, were particular interests to prevail over the common good and lead to manipulating information in order to protect their own plans and projects,” Francis said.
But the deal was not assured by any means. Some nations dug their heels in. For instance, Turkey felt that the UN requested too much of them, an issue resolved by a promise of the conference chairman to hear their appeal later. Nicaragua was upset that there was a mismatch between the aims of the agreement and what it said it would do about it. That, apparently, triggered a phone call from the pope himself to the Nicaraguan President to persuade him to approve the agreement.
Some observers saw the rather obvious connection between the pope’s intervention and the UN agreement. Alison Doig with the UK-based group Christian Aid, who was in Paris monitoring the talks, told Vatican Radio on Dec. 11 that the pope’s role had been “transformative” in mobilizing religious support for stronger environmental protection.
Climate summit after climate summit over the years has yielded no agreement. But because the pope weighted in so strongly and publically on the matter, people took notice and acted. The climate change agreement is a powerful testament to the influence of Pope Francis and the Vatican on world politics and economics. The pope is leading the world into globalism. This will place the pope as the moral and ethical leader of the world, which is exactly the place for which the Papacy has been angling for more than half a century.
Note that the pope spoke of the “common good” and also of an “ever growing sense of solidarity” among the nations. Both of these concepts support globalization and centralization of power. The pope is using the climate change issue to increase papal stature and get the nations relating to the Vatican on global issues.
“All the world wondered…” Revelation 13:3
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