Pope Leo is becoming the climate champion we need

While the leader of 340 million Americans furiously works to derail climate action, the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics is embracing it. In May, when Pope Leo XIV succeeded the late Pope Francis, I suggested he could be the kind of climate champion the world needs when President Donald Trump seems determined to turn the US from one of the world’s leading protectors of the environment to one of its worst vandals. So far, Leo has given no reason to doubt he’ll be at least as green as Francis, who was arguably the greenest pope in modern history, according to the Tribune News Service.

Italy’s government recently approved a 2024 proposal by Francis to build a solar array in a field north of Rome that will generate enough power to provide “the complete energy sustenance of Vatican City State,” as Francis put it. Leo championed the plan just weeks after succeeding Francis, calling it an example for the world. “We all know the effects of climate change, and it is necessary to truly care for the whole world, for all of creation,” Leo told Italian state TV at the site in June.

The solar array, which still needs Italian parliamentary approval, will put the Vatican among the handful of countries generating all their power from renewable energy. Of course, at 0.17 square miles, the Vatican will be the tiniest of that tiny group.

But a little symbolism in this case could go a long way. Trappings like solar panels on the Vatican roof and an all-electric Popemobile aren’t just green window dressing. They manifest a worldview expounded by Francis in his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, which condemned humanity’s degradation of the environment for short-term financial gain.

The 184-page letter to Catholic bishops tied the climate issue to the church’s social-justice mission, warning — correctly — that an increasingly chaotic environment would worsen already steep global inequalities and inflict death and suffering on untold billions of current and future humans, particularly the most vulnerable. The moral case Francis built was strong enough to help convince many world leaders to join the landmark climate accord in Paris that year.

In the decade since, the world seems to have lost much of its appetite for climate action, stung by the kind of fossil-fuel-stoked political backlash embodied by Trump. That makes Leo’s ascension well timed to offer a corrective. He seems to be embracing the opportunity. Along with pushing the solar project, Leo has overseen the addition of a “green” Mass to the church’s list of 49 approved services for various occasions, called the Mass for the Care of Creation. He delivered it for the first time last month at the Laudato Si’ Center in Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer digs.

“We must pray for the conversion of so many people, inside and out of the church, who still don’t recognize the urgency of caring for our common home,” he said, wearing an emerald robe for the occasion. “We see so many natural disasters in the world, nearly every day and in so many countries, that are in part caused by the excesses of being human, with our lifestyle.”

Some Catholic critics said the new Mass didn’t go far enough. And Leo’s embrace of Francis’ progressive views, including his embrace of immigrants, will surely agitate the conservative American Catholics who rebelled against Francis. Some ended up in Trump’s reactionary government.

But the new pope’s views align with those of most Americans — and most American Catholics, 72% of whom in a 2023 poll by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University agreed that “environmental justice is a legitimate issue that needs urgent attention.” In that same poll, “care for the environment” was ranked the second most important issue for the church after “marriage.” A 2022 Pew poll found 57% of U.S. Catholics considered climate change a serious problem, compared with 46% of Protestants. Francis’ Laudato Si’ inspired a movement of Catholic climate action around the world.