Laudate Deum – Vital Message from the Pope on the Climate & Environment Crisis
Pope Francis has released an important letter this week on 4 October 2023 (St Francis Day), running to more than 7,000 words: an exhortation ‘to all people of good will on the climate crisis’.
It’s entitled Laudate Deum (‘Praise God’), and follows up on the 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. The letter merits careful study. The following key points have been flagged up:
- To truly praise God the Creator, we must recognize our role in the climate crisis and hold ourselves responsible for our impact on all creation.
- Climate change represents a profound injustice. We are called to prophetically denounce it.
- Our spiritual and cultural pattern has to change: we must never elevate power and profit above care for our neighbours and for Creation, but rather make the changes that are necessary to heal the climate crisis.
- We must dig for no new fossil fuels and make an immediate switch to renewable energy.
- Insufficient efforts to address the climate crisis have come out of past UN climate negotiations. We must not let COP28 pass without taking the audacious decisions that challenge the fossil fuel industry’s monopoly on power.
- People of faith can cooperate in the building of a better future, where the good gifts of Creation are abundant and shared by all, as God intended. This is key to solving the climate crisis.
Extracts from Laudato Deum can be found here [link to be added shortly], amounting to about one-third of the full text. Here is the full text. In addition, there’s a most helpful website provided by the worldwide Laudato Si’ Movement: see https://laudatedeum.church, from which the key points above have been adapted.
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