Pope Francis says climate change can promote slavery

Pope Francis has urged mayors from big cities across the world to direct their efforts towards care for the environment and the fight against human trafficking.

Referring to his recently published encyclical Laudato si’, he said it is not an encyclical on the environment but rather a social encyclical because the state of the environment is intimately linked to the well-being of humankind.

The Pope was speaking on Tuesday to some 70 mayors who were in the Vatican for a two-day workshop entitled “Modern Slavery and Climate Change” organised by the Pontifical Academies of  Sciences and Social Sciences. He told them he had “a lot of hope’’ that negotiators at Paris climate talks in December will reach an ambitious agreement to reduce global warming. Pope Francis said he placed great trust in the United Nations to bring about a good agreement, but at the same time he wanted the UN to prioritise fighting human trafficking and the exploitation of the world’s most vulnerable people.

In his off-the-cuff greeting to the mayors in his native Spanish, he said migratory waves of peoples across the globe are triggered by environmental trends such as desertification and deforestation.

In this way, he said, the exodus  into urban centres gives life to human trafficking which brings diverse forms of exploitation – economic and sexual – of women, children and vulnerable people.    

Many of those attending –  from cities in North and South America, Europe and developing nations like India and Gabon – say they are committed to environmentally friendly policies aimed at bringing down the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. In a statement ahead of the meeting, the two hosting pontifical academies said “global warming is one of the causes of poverty and forced migrations, and it favours human trafficking, forced labour, prostitution and organ trafficking”.

Speaking to participants on Tuesday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio described Pope Francis as “the most powerful voice on this earth for those not being heard … he did not convene us to accept the status quo but to indict it”.

n Cardinal George Pell  has said that, in calling for global action on climate change in Laudato si’, Pope Francis strayed into issues on which the Church should not pronounce, writes James Roberts. In an interview with the Financial Times last week, Cardinal Pell, who is prefect for the Secretariat of the Economy, said: “The Church has no particular expertise in science . . .  [It] has no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters. We believe in the autonomy of science.”