The climate change conference in Paris follows a string of similar summits that have all been largely failures, to create an international agreement to combat climate change. But, Time magazine said, “there is a new player in town this year who could change everything: Pope Francis.”
On the first day of the conference Francis said, “I am not sure, but I can say to you ‘now or never.’ Every year the problems are getting worse. We are at the limits. If I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the limits of suicide.”
Paris banned demonstrations and marches in the wake of the terrorist attacks. But activists put 20,000 pairs of shoes in the Place de la Republique to symbolize absent marchers on the eve of the summit. Pope Francis sent a pair of his shoes too, so he could show solidarity with protestors against climate change. Incidentally, Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations followed suit and sent a pair of jogging shoes as well.
Pope Francis used his moral authority through his climate encyclical, released in June, which generated wide political response from global leaders including President Obama who tweeted his support for it, and Joe Biden who “read it from cover to cover.”
“In fact, it’s Pope Francis’s populist framework on caring for God’s creation that may prove most effective in the Paris negotiations,” wrote Time magazine. “When Francis worries about the victims of climate change, he’s more concerned about the poor and excluded—not the whales.”
In his encyclical Francis argued that there is an “intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet.” He argued that today’s environmentalist “must hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
That language was a winning formula for the politicians gathered in Paris. President Obama said, to the United Nations in his speech in September, “As His Holiness Pope Francis has rightly implored the world, this is a moral calling.”
EPA Administrator, Roman Catholic Gina McCarthy went on the road with the pope’s message, speaking at two flagship Catholic Universities, Jesuit run Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame. She also co-authored an op-ed with Blase Cupich, Pope Francis’s handpicked archbishop of Chicago in which they said that Americans had a “moral obligation to act on climate.”
The Obama administration has collaborated with Pope Francis on climate change, and has made it a bread-and-butter mainstream issue.
Because of the pope’s popularity, his message on climate change gives domestic and global leaders political cover to take new actions to address climate. And in September, ten House Republicans did just that, writing a resolution citing the pope in their call for the Republican Party to get serious about climate change.
Pope Francis laid the groundwork action in Paris and pointed the way forward. He has changed the discussion. Instead of happening from above it is now happening from below by popular demand in response to the papal appeal. “Francis has given the leaders gathered in Paris the vision and the space to make change.” And they could not resist his powerful moral voice.
This is the stuff of Bible prophecy. Without globalization, and without universal “solidarity,” Rome will never be able to insert herself in world affairs or press for universal Sunday laws. But now, in the name of climate change, Pope Francis has merged the vulnerable poor with climate to effect a powerful argument and placed the political and moral weight of the Vatican above global decision makers insisting on a moral dimension that provided them with the political instruction they needed, and brought them all into the agreement. What an achievement!
“And all the world wondered…” Revelation 13:3
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