Dear Friends,
The Vatican’s latest bid to tackle climate change will bring together politicians and researchers from around the world for a three-day conference scheduled for May 15-17. The conference will feature a series of roundtable discussions and culminate in the signing of a new international protocol that will be submitted to the United Nations.
The joint summit, “From Climate Crisis To Climate Resilience,” will be held at the Vatican at the Casina Pio IV, the seat of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, which sits in the Vatican Gardens. The conference—organized by the two pontifical academies—brings together policymakers, civic leaders, researchers and lawmakers from the United States and other countries, including Italy, Kenya and Sweden.
Pope Francis’s encyclical on ecology, Laudato Si, says that climate change is real. “The problem is urgent “Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years.” We must all change our day-to-day actions to live more sustainably. “Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility.” On a larger scale, our leaders must be held to account. “Those who will have to suffer the consequences. . . will not forget this failure of conscience and responsibility.”
Solving climate change means protecting the planet and vulnerable people, and we must hear “both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” Faith can guide us. “The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains – everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”
