Health permitting, the Pope’s visit to COP28 in Dubai will mark a historic moment: it will be the first time that a leader of the Catholic Church will participate in a UN climate conference. For Dominican priest Thomas Michelet, author of the book “Les Papes et l’écologie” (“The Popes and Ecology”), this is a highlight of the Vatican’s decades-long commitment to protecting our common home.
Marine Henriot and Mario Galgano – Vatican City
Since his election in March 2013, Pope Francis has placed an emphasis on the integrity of creation and the protection of the most vulnerable. The publication of the encyclical Laudato si’ in June 2015 is an example of this. A text that addresses environmental and social issues and recalls two of the common threads of the pontificate. They are: “Everything is connected”; and “The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor can wait no longer.” For his book, Father Michelet familiarized himself with the historical development of the popes’ ecological commitment since the Second Vatican Council.
“In fact, there is today a growing awareness that people and their environment are more than ever inextricably linked: the environment essentially determines human life and development; Man, in turn, perfects and ennobles his environment through his presence, his work and also his contemplation. However, man’s creative capacity will only bear true and lasting fruit if man respects the laws that determine the vital impulse and regenerative capacity of nature: both have a common temporal future. Humanity is therefore warned that it should replace the often blind and brutal impulse for material progress, left to its own dynamism, with respect for the biosphere… We have only one Earth, to use the beautiful motto of the ecology conference in 1972. in Stockholm.”
John Paul II (1978-2005)
Silence in the 70s and 80s
After two decades characterized by relative reticence on the part of the Holy See in this area, the Dominican believes that the advancement of ecology to the center of the papal magisterium dates back to John Paul II’s message for World Day of Peace on January 1, 1990. This text is today considered the first text by a pope who dedicated himself comprehensively to ecology. Professor Michelet, who teaches at the Roman University of Angelicum, said:
“Today’s society will not find a solution to the ecological problem unless it seriously reviews its lifestyle. In many parts of the world, it is prone to hedonism and consumerism and remains indifferent to the harm that comes from it. As John Paul II noted at the time, the gravity of the ecological situation reveals the depth of man’s moral crisis.”
BENEDICT XVI (2005-13)
The importance of environmental protection from the church’s perspective
In addition to symbolic actions, Benedict XVI then showed. on the importance of ecology for the Church – especially in the encyclical Caritas in Veritate of June 2009. For Father Michelet, another milestone in the history of the Church:
“Today, issues related to the protection and preservation of the environment must take due account of the energy issue. This is exactly what Benedict XVI emphasized at the time. outside. The appropriation of non-renewable energy resources by certain States, power groups or companies really represents a serious obstacle to the development of poor countries, which do not have the economic resources to access existing non-renewable energy sources or to seek new energy sources. , to finance alternative sources, says his encyclical.”
And now Pope Francis can take another step in Dubai to continue the previous “ecological path” of the popes to the present, the Dominican priest hopes.
(Vatican news)