“Even so … I am with you because the destruction of the environment is an offense against God, a sin that is not only personal but also structural, one that greatly endangers all human beings, especially the most vulnerable in our midst, and threatens to unleash a conflict between generations.”
Pope Francis would have been the first pope to attend the UN’s climate change conference, known as the “Conference of the Parties” (COP), which has been held annually since 1995.
Care for creation has been an important theme in Francis’ pontificate. The pope has said that he decided to write his 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Si’ ahead of the COP21 summit in Paris and recently published a new apostolic exhortation titled Laudate Deum (“Praise God”), called climate change “one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community.”
In his message to the COP28 conference, the pope underlined the need for “multilateralism” to establish “global and effective rules” to fight climate change.
“Climate change signals the need for political change. Let us emerge from the narrowness of self-interest and nationalism; these are approaches belonging to the past,” he said.
The pope called it “disturbing” that “global warming has been accompanied by a general cooling of multilateralism, a growing lack of trust within the international community.”