From Le Figaro with AFP
Published 2 hours ago, updated 1 hour ago
Pope Francis leads the weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, November 8, 2023. GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE / Portal
Pope Francis will not travel to this city in the United Arab Emirates, where the UN climate conference is taking place from November 30 to December 12.
Following the recommendations of his doctors, Pope Francis canceled his planned trip to Dubai for COP28, the UN climate summit that begins this Thursday, the Vatican announced on Tuesday.
“Although the Holy Father’s general health has improved with regard to his flu symptoms and his respiratory tract inflammation, doctors have asked the Pope not to make the trip to Dubai planned in the coming days,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni announced in a statement Press release.
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This medical commitment must have an impact on Pope Francis, who has made protecting the environment the guiding principle of his pontificate since his election in 2013 and dedicated his encyclical “Laudato si” (“Blessed are you”) in 2015. a 200-page manifesto for an “integral ecology”.
This trip was to be a first, as no pope had personally attended a COP summit since its founding in 1995. This announcement comes nearly two months after Francis published a new text on climate on October 4, “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”), which calls on major powers to abandon fossil fuels.
Eight years after the publication of his founding encyclical on integral ecology, “Laudato Si,” the Argentine Jesuit laments “inadequate responses as the world (…) collapses” and approaches a “point of rupture.”
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In a recent speech, the Pope confided that this conference could represent “a turning point” in the event of a binding agreement on the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources such as wind and solar, otherwise it will be “a great disappointment.” . Jorge Bergoglio, who has made the defense of the “common house” a recurring theme of his pontificate, also warns against “contemptible and unreasonable opinions” from climate skeptics, “including within the Catholic Church.”
On October 11, the Pope received at the Vatican COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, who is also industry minister and head of the United Arab Emirates oil company, a position criticized by environmental activists. Pope Francis points to these concerns in his text, saying that while the Emirates is a “major exporter of fossil fuels,” it has also made “significant investments in renewable energy.”
“To say that there is nothing to hope for would be a suicidal act that would end up exposing all of humanity, especially the poorest, to the worst effects of climate change,” he stresses. The 2015 encyclical Laudato Si sparked a global debate, an unprecedented phenomenon for a religious text, including commentary in academic journals.
It was to be Francis’ 45th foreign trip and sixth in 2023.