Pope Francis to Write Followup to Laudato Si’

CV NEWS FEED // Pope Francis is writing a second part to his 2015 climate encyclical Laudato Si‘, saying that environmental concerns that have evolved over the last eight years need to be acknowledged and added to the original document.

Pope Francis’ announcement comes just days before the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on September 1, which he established in 2015. At that time, Pope Francis also founded the annual Season of Creation in the Church, which lasts from September 1 to St. Francis’ feast day on October 4. 

While Pope Francis has not disclosed any more information about the document, Hungarian president Katalin Novák, who met privately with Pope Francis on August 25, said that document is set to be released on October 4.

“He told me he is working on writing a new encyclical, a new edition of Laudato Si’ and it will be published October 4,” she told an Italian newspaper in an interview. “The first encyclical was promulgated in 2015 and since so many things have changed a bit since then, he told me there was a need to update it. Alongside the issues already covered, there will be others, new ones, but we did not go into too much detail.” 

In his message for the Season of Creation 2023, Pope Francis wrote that Christians must “put an end to the senseless war against creation” and also called for “the renewal of our relationship with creation so that we no longer see it as an object to be exploited but cherish it instead as a sacred gift from our Creator.” 

The pope also discussed various climate issues, mainly focusing on the alleged harms of fossil fuels and a perceived lack of water.

“The unrestrained burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests are pushing temperatures higher and leading to massive droughts,” he said. “Alarming water shortages increasingly affect both small rural communities and large metropolises… ‘Sister Water’, in the words of Saint Francis of Assisi, is pillaged and turned into ‘a commodity subject to the laws of the market.’”

As reported by CatholicVote, however, over 1,600 scientists and professionals throughout the world have recently declared that “there is no climate emergency.” Despite this, Pope Francis continues to advocate for the promotion of climate change in the Church.

Pope Francis has been critiqued for his views on environmental issues—W. David Montgomery, an economist and climate change expert, critiqued Laudato Si’ in 2015 and called it “flawed,” saying that Pope Francis misunderstood economic and ecological issues.

“Unfortunately, the encyclical’s presentation of the roots of the ecological crisis mostly blames industrial countries for all the world’s ills, implying that restorative justice is the reason for action,” Montgomery wrote. 

“This view of the situation is deeply flawed,” he continued. “Despite Pope Francis’s intention to propose actions that will benefit the poor, his sweeping condemnations of markets and technology and his proposals for climate policy are more likely to keep the global poor in their current state or make them worse off than they are to help alleviate poverty.”