By Joseph Bonasia
MAGA commentators have labelled Pope Leo XIV a “woke” pope due to his recent comments regarding climate change and his blessing of a melting block of Greenland ice. He was speaking to participants in the “Raising Hope” Conference on the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.”
Lord knows many people are deep in grief and low on hope, given the state of the planet and the direction of U.S. environmental policy.
“Laudato Si’” was the first encyclical — a letter from a pope regarding the teachings of the church — to make the environment its central theme. It addressed climate and other ecological crises and connected them to social justice and economic inequality. The cry of the earth, Francis said, leads to the cry of the poor.
Pope Leo made clear he would build upon Francis’ efforts.
Just days after President Donald Trump told the United Nations that climate change “is the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” Leo, in evident response, said, “Some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming.
“The challenges identified in ‘Laudato Si’,’” he added, “are in fact even more relevant today than they were 10 years ago. These challenges are of a social and political nature, but first and foremost of a spiritual nature: They call for conversion.”
He said that hearing the cries of the Earth and of the poor should not be “seen and felt as divisive issues.” The swift MAGA backlash bore out his comments about the divisive, social and political nature of caring for the planet in America today.
MAGA commentators, however, are wrong in believing that the issues and teachings detailed in “Laudato Si’” are the concerns of two “woke” popes.
The first “Green Pope” was not Francis, but his predecessor, Pope Benedict. About 2,400 solar panels at the Vatican symbolize the importance that this conservative pope placed on environmental issues.
It was Benedict who, delving into the roots of our environmental crises, proposed “eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and correcting the models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment.”
Francis cites his predecessor’s writings nearly two dozen times in “Laudato Si’.” In many ways, Benedict “paved the way” for ideas that Francis explored in his encyclical.
Pope John Paul II, also a conservative pope, warned that human beings frequently seem “to see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption.” The Trump administration fits this description.
In 1990, before caring for the planet became a cultural and political divide among Americans, and long before “woke” became a common term, John Paul II emphasized that ecological crisis is a moral issue.
“We cannot,” he said, “interfere in one area of the ecosystem without paying due attention both to the consequences of such interference in other areas and to the well-being of future generations.”
Predating Francis and Leo by decades, he called for a “genuine conversion in ways of thought and behavior” toward the natural world.
“Christians, in particular,” he wrote, “realize that their responsibility within creation and their duty towards nature and the Creator are an essential part of their faith.”
And before John Paul II, Pope Paul VI said, “Due to an ill-considered exploitation of nature, humanity runs the risk of destroying it and becoming in turn a victim of this degradation.” He called for a “radical change in the conduct of humanity.”
These teachings threaten the MAGA worldview, so they criticize, ridicule and dismiss them the way they do the overwhelming scientific evidence and consensus regarding climate change. Meanwhile, they empower Trump to pursue policies that will cause grievous harm to the planet and people.
In his “Raising Hope” comments, made to a global audience, Leo urged everyone to pressure governments to pursue more effective climate actions.
But a greater source of hope for me lies in this American-born pope emphasizing that confronting climate change is a spiritual imperative and responsibility, signaling that ecological teachings and environmental efforts are becoming an ever more prominent focus of the Catholic Church with its 53 million adherents in the U.S. and 1.4 billion worldwide.
“Lord of life,” he said while blessing the block of Greenland ice, “bless this water. May it awaken our hearts, cleanse our indifference, sooth our grief and renew our hope.”
Amen to that.
Joseph Bonasia is a founding board member of the SWFL RESET Center. Banner photo: Pope Leo XIV during an audience with the media in May (Edgar Beltrán/The Pillar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
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