The vision
“It may be a signal to say, ‘America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future where we collectively have been working to create a future worthy of our children and our children’s children.’”
— Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology
The spotlight
The institution of the Catholic Church has existed for around 2,000 years. If it were a country, it would rank as the third most populous — above the United States — with some 1.4 billion adherents worldwide. And this month, it welcomed its 267th leader: Pope Leo XIV, the first pontiff in the church’s history to hail from the U.S.
The succession involves all kinds of rituals (from the conclave inside the Sistine Chapel to the white smoke that signals a decision). Even for a non-Catholic, it’s an interesting story. The papacy holds a great deal of power and influence, and the last time it changed hands was over a decade ago. It’s natural to wonder what this new leader’s stance will be on the issues of our time — including climate change — not least because, in the past decade, Leo’s predecessor became an unexpected voice for climate leadership, and his efforts made the Catholic Church a unique case study on what it takes to create cultural shifts in this incredibly pivotal and divided time.
The late Pope Francis, who was appointed to the office in 2013, in many ways surprised the world with his staunch focus on climate change as a moral issue. In his second encyclical, a papal letter entitled Laudato si’ (“praise be to you” in Italian), Francis described the importance of taking action to combat environmental degradation and the changing climate, and specifically called out the wealthiest countries for the rampant consumerism and unchecked development that has caused our planetary crisis. The letter was subtitled “On care for our common home.”
“I was really struck by how transformative Francis’ landmark encyclical ended up being on a global level — and how explicitly radical many of his views on climate action and Indigenous rights were seen as within the world’s most powerful religious institution,” said Grist’s Ayurella Horn-Muller, who, along with Anita Hofschneider, wrote a story last week examining his legacy and asking: What will the papal succession mean for climate and social justice?
“What I found most surprising while working on this was how little there seemed to be in the general discourse about Leo’s track record on climate justice issues,” said Horn-Muller. But, she said, as she and Hofschneider began reporting and learning more about Leo’s past, “the clearer it became that the new leader of the Catholic Church shares key perspectives with his predecessor, and may even be poised to effect more direct institutional change than Francis advanced in his 12 years as pontiff.”
That’s a prediction that others share — particularly when it comes to influencing more conservative Catholics in the U.S. While many on the American right balked at Francis’ progressivism, some experts speculate that a pontiff who understands American culture more intimately, and also favors some of the trappings of traditionalism that his predecessor rejected, might have an easier time getting through to them.
We’ve excerpted Hofschneider and Horn-Muller’s story below, exploring both Francis’ legacy and what we know about Leo’s stance on issues of human rights and environmental peril. Find the full piece on the Grist website here.
— Claire Elise Thompson
What Pope Leo means for global climate action and colonialism (Excerpt)
On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,” he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the native peoples.”
Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples’ guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. “Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,” he said.
To Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an Indigenous leader who was in the stadium that day, the words from the head of the Catholic Church — which claims 1.4 billion members and has a long, sordid history of violence against Indigenous peoples worldwide — were welcome and momentous.
“Few world leaders have spoken about our issues, and the pope said publicly the rights of Indigenous peoples were historically violated,” he said after Pope Francis died last month. “Let us hope that the new pope is a person who can continue implementing the position the pope who passed away has been talking about.”
Pope Francis delivers a speech during a meeting with representatives of indigenous communities of the Amazon Basin from Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia, in the Peruvian city of Puerto Maldonado, on January 19, 2018. Vincenzo Pinto / AFP via Getty Images
During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world’s most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the church’s role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism. As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world — and far-right politics continues to rise globally — experts see the conclave’s selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn’t going anywhere.
In 2015, Pope Francis released his historic papal letter, or encyclical, titled Laudato si’. In the roughly 180-page document, he unequivocally identified planet-heating pollution as a pressing global issue disproportionately impacting the world’s poor, and condemned the outsize role wealthy countries like the U.S. have in contributing to the climate crisis. With it, Francis did what no pope had done before: He spoke with great clarity and urgency about human degradation of the environment being not just an environmental issue, but a social and moral one. Laudato si’ established the definitive connection between faith, climate change, and social justice, and made it a tenet of Catholic doctrine.
The lasting influence of Francis’ encyclical would be buoyed by his other writings, homilies, and his direct appeals to world leaders. He was, for example, credited with helping rally nearly 200 countries to sign the 2015 Paris Agreement, regularly urged cooperation at international climate summits, and released a follow-up to his pioneering encyclical in 2023 that sounded the alarm in the face of the climate crisis.
“Pope Francis routinely said that we have a throwaway society. We throw away people, we throw away nature … and that we really need a culture that’s much more based in care,” said Christopher Cox, executive director of the Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment and a former priest. “That means care for people, especially the most poor, the most vulnerable, the most marginalized. And we also need much greater care for creation. We’ve been given a beautiful earth and we’re consuming it at a rate that goes far beyond what will be able to sustain life for the long term.”
The first Latin American pope, Francis was unique in implicitly embracing some elements of liberation theology, a Catholic social justice movement that calls for the liberation of marginalized peoples from oppression. Although Francis was occasionally critical of the doctrine’s Marxist elements and never fully supportive of it, many observers see his statements regarding poor and Indigenous peoples as reflective of the doctrine’s central values.
“Right from the beginning of his papacy, that outreach, that recognition of Indigenous ways of being Catholic and Indigenous language in Catholicism, heralded — up to that point — the most expansive official recognition of Indigenous contributions to Catholicism thus far,” said Eben Levey, an assistant professor of history at Alfred University who has studied the relationship between the Catholic Church and Indigenous peoples in Latin America. In the centuries since conquistadores arrived in the Americas and forced Indigenous peoples to accept their religion, many Indigenous communities have made Catholicism their own, and a growing number of church leaders have embraced the idea that there are multiple ways of being Catholic and that Catholicism and Indigenous cultures can coexist.
Though Pope Leo XIV has been lauded for his advocacy in defense of immigrants and worker rights — his namesake, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until 1903, is known as a historical Catholic champion of social justice and equality — the new pope’s track record on engaging directly with climate change is sparse.
Still, Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, sees comments the new pope made last year on the need to move “from words to action” as a promising sign that he will continue Francis’ commitment to communicating the urgency of a warming world. The timing of the conclave’s unprecedented decision to select the first pontiff from the United States, coming amid the Trump administration’s sweeping dismissal of climate action, elimination of environmental protections, and attacks on Indigenous rights, isn’t lost on her.
“It may be a signal to say, ‘America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future where we collectively have been working to create a future worthy of our children and our children’s children,’” she said.
Dancers from Latin America celebrate the newly elected Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s square. Valeria Ferraro / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Leo grew up in Chicago and is a citizen of both the U.S. and Peru, where he spent decades serving as a missionary and bishop before Francis made him a cardinal in 2023. He speaks five languages fluently and some Quechua, an Indigenous Incan language.
While he was working in Peru in the 1990s, Leo was critical of the government’s human rights abuses — though he refrained from explicitly taking sides in the political fight between Maoist rebels and the government of then-dictator Alberto Fujimori, according to Matthew Casey, a historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University based in Lima. Still, his reaction to the country’s authoritarianism could provide a glimpse of what stances he might take as pope, Casey said. “It doesn’t matter who was abusing human rights, he was on the side of the people,” he said.
In 2016, the would-be pontiff spoke at a conference in Brazil where attendees talked about threats to the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous peoples who lived there. He praised Francis’ encyclical, describing the document as “very important” and representing “something new in terms of this explicit expression of the church’s concern for all of creation.” To Casey, that suggests Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor, has an awareness of the issues affecting Indigenous peoples, such as the rampant degradation of the environment.
“Both Francis and Prevost are attuned to Indigeneity in ways that they couldn’t have been if they worked in Europe or the United States, because the politics of Indigeneity in Latin America are just so different,” Casey said. More than a week after the conclave that named him pope, communities across Peru are still celebrating the selection of Pope Leo XIV.
Francis and Leo’s shared experiences working with marginalized communities harmed by colonialism and climate change, and their commitment to the social justice aspects of the church’s mission, are particularly meaningful in this political moment, said Levey, the Alfred University historian.
“We are seeing a resurgence of ultra right-wing politics globally, and the Catholic Church, next to the United Nations, is one of the few multilateral organizations perhaps capable of responding in some form or fashion to the questions of our modern age or contemporary moment,” he said.
— Anita Hofschneider & Ayurella Horn-Muller
More exposure
- Read: more about Pope Francis’ climate advocacy, and the difficulty he faced in inspiring real progress — especially among the Catholic community in the U.S. (Grist)
- Read: more about what commentators expect from Leo’s papacy, particularly with regards to his relationship to American Catholics and traditionalists (The Guardian)
- Read: about how various faith groups and coalitions are mobilizing to fill a void of climate leadership left by the Trump administration (Yale Climate Connections)
- Read: an opinion piece arguing for the importance of moral clarity and leadership on climate change among the Muslim community (The Conversation)
- Read: about an Indigenous-led interpretation of the Bible, the First Nations Version, which shifts the language to reflect more of a relationship of care with creation and less one of dominance (Grist)
A parting shot
Faith leaders have long played a role at the annual U.N. climate Conference of the Parties, or COP. This photo shows a vigil held on the first day of the 2021 conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Religious leaders (representing Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Baha’i, pagan, and Brahma Kumaris communities) gathered in George Square to lead prayers and meditations calling for global climate justice. The vigil was livestreamed to reach viewers all over the world.
