Commentary
Francis believed there could not be environmental justice without social justice
Rarely has a pope aroused so much hostility, and not only among those whose thinking and actions he openly opposed. The hostility also came – and especially so – from among much of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Vatican.
Perhaps no pope has ever spurred such a need for deep and heartfelt reflection on oneself and the world as Francis did, not only in a substantial part of Catholicism but also among a large number of nonbelievers. But rarely has a pope aroused so much hostility as well, and not only among those whose thinking and actions he openly opposed on such central issues as migration, wars, the climate, inequality, technology, economics and so many others.
The hostility also came – and especially so – from among much of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Vatican, a real den of shady dealings, cynicism and absence of the spirit of the Gospels. That is what Francis had to deal with as pope, with great caution, especially on so-called “sensitive” issues such as abortion, end-of-life, gender, divorce, female and secular priesthood, etc., which his opponents (now jockeying for revenge) have always put before the Gospel imperatives of caring for creation, victims, the poor, the marginalized, the suffering. And then, there is no politician who hasn’t paid formal homage to Pope Francis and his encyclical Laudato Si, and who isn’t paying it once more now after his death. But not a single one of them, anywhere in the world, has taken its message seriously.
His pontificate was continuously marked by initiatives and gestures that underscored his messages: from his visit to Lampedusa in remembrance of the migrants left to die at sea to his solitary walk in St. Peter's Square to promote solidarity at the time of COVID; and from his Jubilee celebrations in an African country and in the Rebibbia prison to the meetings he set up, or at least attempted, to try to end the ongoing wars. But all his initiatives and travels have been supported and guided by a real revolution in the Catholic tradition: by a Christianity that no longer put the domination of man over the rest of the world, but rather the care for creation at the center of this new vision: the only authentic framework of respect for life in all its manifestations, for our suffering Earth, for the human being (for whom Francis never used the term “man,” so as not to exclude women), not as a lord but as a steward of the world.
This is the central theme of his encyclical Laudato Si 2015), an extraordinary document that manages to bring together all the fundamental problems of our time in compact form, in just a few pages, with a simplicity and clarity matched only by its depth. Many of the approaches to the issues addressed could already be found in works in the fields of deep ecology and ecofeminism, which Francis was able to collect and rework, along with the many insights provided to him by the indigenous cultures of the Amazon, to which he even wanted to dedicate a synod, aimed at “inculturating” – the term he used, i.e. grafting – the Gospel message onto the sensitivity towards nature of peoples faithful to traditional customs and beliefs. But the importance of the encyclical's truths doesn’t lie only in the fact that they were proclaimed by “a head of state” (as many have said), but rather in the inseparable nexus it was able to explicitly outline between environmental justice and social justice, between “the cry of the Earth” and that of the oppressed, between the urgency of saving and restoring the environment and the demands and struggles of the Earth's poor.
That encyclical has perhaps been read more by nonbelievers than by Catholics: this, at least, is our experience as activists of the Laudato Si NGO, which we founded a few months after its publication, as scholars, disseminators and interpreters of its contents, committed to articulating them from every perspective, applied to both daily life and to major political, social, climatic and environmental events. It is a document whose reading should be complemented by at least three others: Francis’s 2014 address to the first meeting of the popular movements, a real exhortation he gave to the most disadvantaged to fight for their rights; his encyclical All Brothers (2020), a project and plea for a social order based on solidarity and sharing and not on competition and appropriation; and his exhortation Laudate Deum (2023), a final and almost desperate call to remember the climate crisis, addressed to the whole world, but especially to the powerful of the Earth, at a time when the race to wage war has made almost everyone forget that our world is on the brink.
But throughout all these documents, as in all the circumstances in which Francis conducted his activities in public, there has never been a lack of his trademark gentleness, attentiveness, approachability and even verve – including his penultimate appearance in which he donned a poncho, a garb surely more suitable than the usual for the successors of Peter – that have distinguished his pontificate from those of all the popes who have preceded him. These traits have made him the true heir of the saint whose name he chose to take.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/non-ce-giustizia-ambientale-senza-quella-sociale on 2025-04-23