VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Warning of “irreversible impacts” if the world stays on its current course, three influential cardinals from the Global South presented a document at the Vatican on Tuesday (July 1) calling for bold international action on climate change ahead of COP30, the 30th United Nations summit, scheduled for November in Brazil.
“Our message today is not diplomatic — it is pastoral,” said Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão, archbishop of Goa, India, and president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, who was one of the presenters. “It is a call to conscience in the face of a system that threatens to devour creation.”
The other prelates at Tuesday’s event were Cardinal Jaime Spengler, archbishop of Porto Alegre, Brazil, and president of the Latin American Bishops’ Conference, and Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo, and president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.
The document, “A call for Climate Justice and the Common Home: Ecological Conversion, Transformation and Resistance to False Solutions,” was written by bishops, activists and climate experts from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and addressed to all world leaders. It marks the 10th anniversary of both Pope Francis’ “green” encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” and the si …