COP30 must end ‘political failure’ on climate crisis, says Leo

‘One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes. To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity.’

The Pope demanded political action to meet the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement target to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5°C.

“It is not the agreement that is failing, we are failing in our response,” Pope Leo said in a video message on Monday to bishops attending COP30 in the Brazilian city of Belém. “What is failing is the political will of some. True leadership means service, and support at a scale that will make a difference. Stronger climate actions will create stronger and fairer economic systems.”

The Archbishop of Porto Alegre Cardinal Jaime Spengler, the Archbishop of Kinshasa Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo and the Archbishop of Goa and Dama Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão – who respectively lead episcopal bodies for Latin America, Africa and Asia – were among the representatives of the Church in the Global South at the climate summit which runs until Friday.

Pope Leo said their “prophetic voice” showed that “the Amazon region remains a living symbol of creation with an urgent need for care”.

“The creation is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat,” he said. “One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes. To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity.”

On 13 November the three cardinals presented a document titled “A call for climate justice and the common home: Ecological conversion, transformation and resistance to false solutions” in the “blue zone” of COP30 where key negotiations take place. It called for an immediate halt to fossil fuel exploration and for finance to cover the energy transition and adaptation to climate change.

On a panel organised by Caritas Internationalis last week the Bishop of Kalookan Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David remembered the victims of natural disasters in the Philippines, saying: “The people least responsible for global warming suffer the most.”

“Typhoons are getting stronger, more devastating, and carrying much more rain, which they dump it within hours, causing catastrophe,” he said. “We must not make it so easy to abuse nature.”

Reflecting on the significance of the climate summit, Cardinal David said: “It’s almost like Pentecost. We come from various countries all over the world. I didn’t realise how seriously people are taking COP30 – just being there among the nations was amazing.”

The Laudato Si’ Movement hosted a panel with the Archbishop of Manaus Cardinal Leonardo Steiner and Jean-Pascal van Ypersele of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for scientific assessments on climate change who discussed the wide influence of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’.

“It has influenced a much broader audience – hundreds of millions of people around the world,” Ypersele said, adding that the encyclical “built a bridge between science and values” that helped to shape policies and expand global awareness.

Elsewhere, discussing the climate crisis as “a spiritual crisis”, the Laudato Si’ Movement’s executive director Dr Lorna Gold emphasised the role of faith communities in building a more sustainable future. Yeb Saño, chair of the Laudato Si’ Movement board, attended an interfaith gathering on the spiritual call to solidarity in response to the climate crisis.

The Laudato Si’ Movement, CIDSE, Franciscans International and Jesuit Missions were among the Christian groups present at the Global Climate March in Belém on 15 November. Franciscans International said the call for Climate Justice resonates strongly with Franciscan spirituality on the 800th anniversary of St Francis composing “The Canticle of the Creatures”.

CIDSE – an international alliance of 18 Catholic agencies working together for global justice – said that “real change isn’t coming from the top down – it’s rising from the ground up, from the communities living on the frontlines of the climate crisis, from those who have been systematically excluded from decision-making spaces”.

At the climate march, some groups carried three giant coffins reading Oil, Coal and Gas flanked by two grim reapers. Indigenous groups displayed signs reading “The Answer Is Us”, while an inflatable elephant and anaconda weaved through the crowd. Earlier in the week a flotilla of Indigenous sailed down the Amazon to the gates of the conference, supported by religious groups including the Franciscans.

Amid criticism of the Brazilian government for granting permission to its state oil company to explore for oil at the mouth of the Amazon before hosting the conference, the chief executive of Caritas Australia Kirsten Sayers reflected that the legacy of 30 years of COP negotiations was “mixed”.

“While the process has elevated awareness and built frameworks, the gap between promises and action remains stark, especially for communities on the frontlines,” she said, pointing to the developed world’s “ecological debt” to Caritas partners in the Pacific and Africa. “If COP30 ends without concrete steps, faith-based movements must continue to push for accountability.”

The Revd Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal priest and executive director of GreenFaith, commented:

“The real obstacle is the moral cowardice of the biggest polluters – the US, China, Russia, Germany, the UK, Japan, India, France and Canada – whose leaders refuse to match their words with action. Behind them stand the fossil fuel giants that have known for decades their products were heating the planet and did it anyway. This is not just policy failure. It’s an ethical breakdown.”

In a statement last week, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Ghana called environmental destruction “a form of violence against the weak and creation” as well as “a profound moral crisis and a spiritual challenge”.

The bishops called on their government to clamp down on the “menace” of destructive large-scale mining and establish “transparent reporting on water, forests and food safety indicators”.

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