Many will recall 13 March 2013, the day Pope Francis was elected, with great clarity. I was still at school and remember perfectly how lost for words our Jesuit chaplain was when, after the TV showed the white smoke, a Jesuit by the name of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio appeared. The next surprise came soon after because Bergoglio had chosen the name Francis, whilst we initially believed this to be after the great Jesuit missionary St Francis Xavier, it appeared soon after that his namesake was in fact after St Francis of Assisi.

This was a very quick indication that a concern for integral ecology was high on this man’s agenda. St Francis of Assisi was a 13th-century mystic who in 1979 was declared by St Pope John Paul II as the patron saint of those who promote ecology. He remarked that “among the holy and admirable men who have revered nature as a wonderful gift of God to the human race, St Francis of Assisi deserves special consideration.”

So it was also appropriate that Pope Francis chose Laudato Si’ as the name for his second encyclical in 2015, as this was a line from one of St Francis’ writings, which translates to Praise Be to You. This is widely regarded as Pope Francis’s writing, which made the largest impact.

The spirituality which inspired this encyclical uniquely embraced a moral call to address climate change and was the first papal encyclical to be addressed to every person on the earth, not just Catholics. ‘The Earth, our home, is beginning to look like an immense pile of filth’, wrote Francis as he stressed the importance of how climate change affects the poorest in the world the most and how embracing simplicity was good for both humanity and the planet.

However, this call went beyond spirituality and inspired a new wave of faith-based climate activism with many new initiatives across the world being set up in response to this encyclical, like the Laudato Si’ Movement, which coordinates climate activism across the world. It has 900 Catholic organisations as well as 10,000 direct volunteers.

Laudato Si’ was smartly timed to coincide with the Paris Agreement in 2015, which committed countries to a target of 1.5°c warming, with Pope Francis always understanding the importance of international cooperation on climate action. This was clearest with the release of Laudate Deum on the Feast of St Francis of Assisi in October 2023.

The text was released ahead of COP28, and he used it as a chance to press the importance of the climate debate: “I feel obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church”. Pope Francis was indeed an outlier in many ways because of his steadfast accompaniment to the climate debate, and this was in contrast to increasing scepticism by world leaders.

A need for simplicity was the overwhelming message of Pope Francis’s pontificate, and through his own example, following the steps of St Francis of Assisi, he shunned elaborate honours bestowed on him as a message that humankind must embrace the poor and have gratitude for creation. “The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all”, wrote Francis in Laudato Si’, and it’s his overwhelming legacy that the simplest thing we can do as a society is to protect Our Common Home, which has given us life.

Thank you, Papa Francesco.

Colm Fahy
JESC Ecology Advocacy Officer