VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) –– Pope Francis has revealed that he is writing a second environmental document as a “second part” of his 2015 Laudato Si’ which will “update the current issues.”
In a brief remark at the end of a meeting Monday, Pope Francis announced news of an upcoming text on environmental issues. Speaking to a group of lawyers from members states of the Council of Europe, he stated that “I am currently writing a second part to Laudato Si’ in order to address present problems.”
The Holy See Press Office confirmed this, with Matteo Bruni explaining that the upcoming document was a “letter intended to address in particular the recent climate crises.” No other information has yet been issued.
READ: Laudato Si’ ignores real gains for the environment and the poor
Published in 2015, Laudato Si’ was Pope Francis’ second encyclical, and focused on environmental and climate issues, being secondarily titled “Care for Our Common Home.” He did not limit the text to expounding on the Catholic teaching of creation as entrusted to man by God, but additionally promoted the “climate change” arguments.
Pope Francis referred to the “profoundly human causes of environmental degradation,” and the “human causes which produce or aggravate” what he referred to as “a disturbing warming of the climatic system.”
He also promoted the concept of “ecological conversion” – a term he drew from Pope John Paul II – stating that “an ecological conversion can inspire us to greater creativity and enthusiasm in resolving the world’s problems and in offering ourselves to God ‘as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable.’”
But shortly after its release, the late Australian prelate Cardinal George Pell criticized the Pope’s text, saying that the Church “has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.”
Cardinal Pell received much media backlash over the years for rejecting the ramped up fears of “climate change,” notably describing the movement in 2018 as an “intolerant bandwagon with loud, exaggerated claims.”
READ: Pope Francis calls for an ‘end’ to ‘the era of fossil fuel’ in Prayer for Creation message
Pro-life and family leaders were also swift to warn about the dangers and ineffective nature of Laudato Si’. Writing weeks after its publication in 2015, LifeSite’s president Steve Jalsevac observed that “anti-Christian secular leaders and institutions are seeing the encyclical, and the upcoming visit of Francis to the United Nations, the U.S. Congress and the Obama White House to promote the encyclical, as the most dramatic coup for their efforts that they could ever have imagined.”
Pro-life and family advocates have continually expressed concern over the climate activism movement, given that it is often aligned with pro-abortion and population control advocates and lobby groups. Others say much of climate activism is about garnering government grants and exerting statist power.
READ: Pope Francis: Go to confession for not recycling, repent of excess plastic and paper
Nevertheless, Pope Francis has consistently promoted the arguments of “climate change” issues, regularly claiming that serious consequences are due to occur in light of man’s impact on the climate. Some more notable interventions include his 2019 message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, when he argued that “we have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own.”
Then in 2020 he notably delivered a TED talk in which he described the current global situation as “unsustainable,” and argued that there are less than 30 years to achieve the “race to a zero-carbon world.”
“Not taking care of the climate” has even been described as a “sin” by the pontiff, and as a “form of paganism.” “I think not caring for creation is like idolizing it, reducing it to an idol, detaching it from the gift of creation,” he argued. “In this sense, caring for the communal home is already ‘evangelization.’”
His 2015 encyclical has also led to the birth of a global movement, which links “climate change” activism to the Pope’s words. The Laudato Si’ Movement issues calls to divest from fossil fuels, and aims to “turn Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si’ into action for climate and ecological justice.”
READ: Catholic groups worldwide join fossil fuel ‘divestment’ to fight ‘climate change’
This “divestment” is to limit the “catastrophic impacts that could lead to the displacement of hundreds of millions of people” should the earth’s temperature rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level that climate change activists argue could lead to a global crisis.
Speaking to LifeSiteNews earlier this year, Bishop Athanasius Schneider condemned the Pope’s concept of “ecological conversion” as being “an expression of pure naturalism… there is no supernatural vision, or a very vacant supernatural vision.”
“Ecological conversion is an abuse of this concept of conversion itself,” he continued, since conversion “is firstly used by God in Revelation to convert from sin. To convert from being away from God.”
This matter of ecological conversion is an an abuse of the concept of conversion itself and our vision input away from the essential, supernatural vision to a natural vision of the Church.
On the contrary, Schneider noted that “conversion” must be rooted in Christ’s call for “penance” which is required for mortal sins.
Other problems lie within the Pope’s document, since while he continues to promote “climate change” as evidenced by “a very solid scientific consensus,” Francis has been contradicted by scientists in the field who argue the “Pope is getting terrible advice from some exalted churchmen who are seriously deficient in scientific knowledge.”
Speaking to LifeSite in 2016 – who took part in a 2015 Vatican climate conference showing that global warming is not a crisis – they argued that the Pope was aligning himself with UN-style talking points in Laudato Si’. The text contains “far too much influence from the basically political agenda of the UN, focused on creation of UN-led global government control, redistribution of global wealth, and global population control as part of the true meaning of ‘sustainable development,’” the late Dr. Hal Doiron argued.
“I would recommend that Pope Francis focus more on the full range of moral issues associated with what the UN wants to accomplish with its ‘anti-CO2’ and ‘sustainable development’ agenda,” he added.