Francis meets Ban Ki-moon to discuss climate change

Pope Francis met Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday to discuss the moral issues around climate change ahead of a Vatican conference about Christian stewardship, writes Liz Dodd.

The UN Secretary General was in Rome to address a one-day symposium organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Ban Ki-moon said that the conversation was “fruitful and wide ranging”. Afterwards he told the symposium that climate change was a moral matter and “the defining issue of our time”.  

He looked forward to Pope Francis’ forthcoming encyclical on the environment and said that it was critical that world leaders hear his “strong moral voice”.

On Monday, the Heartland Institute, which denies climate change is the result of human activity, hosted a conference near the Vatican and urged the Pope not to “put the enormous weight of your moral authority behind the discredited and scandal-prone UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)”.