VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The Vatican announced a new campaign to urge divestment from mining activities, which Catholic Church leaders said enrich wealthy countries while leaving environmental damage and poverty in the Global South.
“We are living in a time when humanity faces a decisive question: What kind of world do we want to leave to the generations that come after us?” said Cardinal Fabio Baggio, undersecretary of the Vatican Department for Integral Human Development, in announcing the campaign on Friday (March 20). “This question is not abstract. It has the face of concrete communities — Indigenous peoples who see their territories threatened, families who lose their sources of water, mountains opened like wounds and rivers turned into silent witnesses of contamination.”
The Vatican’s campaign and divestment platform is in conjunction with the Church and Mining Network, a group that engages 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to promote rights of local and Indigenous communities and build consensus around divestment from mining and related activities. Institutions that join the platform can share and compare practices for divestment and ethical investment policies.
Speakers at the Vatican press conference on Friday said about 40 faith-based organizations are involved in the platform, but a monetary divestment goal …