A backgrounder on Laudate Deum and what it means for COP28

Ecojesuit

On October 4, 2023, just two months before UNFCCC COP28, Pope Francis released a new pastoral document addressing the climate crisis. This document, Laudate Deum, is addressed “to all people of good will” and is intended to be an addendum to Laudato Si’, the Pope’s groundbreaking 2015 encyclical on the global environmental and social crisis. It also draws on his 2020 letter, Fratelli tutti, which called for transformative global political and economic reform in the spirit of social friendship.

Laudate Deum begins by making clear that the climate crisis is a moral concern of the utmost importance. Francis reminds us that climate change is primarily a question of good and evil, and he quotes the African bishops to make his point: “to express bluntly that this is no longer a secondary or ideological question, but a drama that harms us all, the African bishops stated that climate change makes manifest ‘a tragic and striking example of structural sin.’”

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