Pope Francis has urged world leaders to take “radical decisions” at next week’s global environmental summit in a special message recorded for BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. Leaders attending the Cop26 conference in Glasgow must offer “concrete hope to future generations”, the pontiff noted. Francis is not attending the summit, despite earlier suggestions that he would fly in for a brief appearance to reinforce the significant of the event. His message was recorded in Italian and lasted almost five minutes. It was broadcast on Friday morning with a voiceover in English. He said: Climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic have exposed our deep vulnerability and raised numerous doubts and concerns about our economic systems and the way we organize our societies.
“We have lost our sense of security, and are experiencing a sense of powerlessness and loss of control over our lives. We find ourselves increasingly frail and even fearful.”
The Pope decried responses of “Isolationism, protectionism and exploitation” to tackle the crises, emphasizing cooperation and common purpose as the only way “towards a brighter horizon.”
This could only be pursued through “a renewed sense of share responsibility for our world, and an effective solidarity based on justice, a sense of our common destiny and a recognition of the unity of our human family in God’s plan for the world.”
The pope has frequently evoked the climate crisis in speeches, and in 2015 published an encyclical, or papal document, called Laudato Si' focusing on the issue. In the text, subtitled On Care for our Common Home, he decried environmental destruction, stressed the need to take mitigating measures and gave an unambiguous acceptance that climate change was largely manmade.
