Pope Francis & Rising Seas

 

Pope Francis meeting with Bob Dadae, the governor general of Papua New Guinea, in Port Moresby on Saturday.Credit...Pool photo by Guglielmo Mangiapane

I might have settled on one blog entry about the lengthy visit of Pope Francis to Asia-Pacific nations but this is the Season of Creation and the pontiff has included a focus on climate change or what is more aptly termed the climate emergency. 

Francis has made care for Creation and honouring the Creator a priority of his papacy, even to choosing his papal name in honour of Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of the environment. His 2015 encyclical , Laudato si' (Praise Be to You), draws on the Canticle of St. Francis for inspiration and is subtitled "on care for our common home". It is a nuanced, wide-ranging document. 

Island nations are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and first in Indonesia, then in Papua New Guinea this reality has been noted. A New York Times article by Emma Bubola offers: 

In the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea, hundreds of people may soon have to abandon their homes, pushed inland by the rising sea. Hundreds more were buried in a devastating landslide this year. Around the country, intensive logging is shrinking the island’s lush rainforests, and mine tailings have polluted its rivers.

On Friday, Pope Francis, who has long begged the world to preserve nature, started his visit to a place that is a stark example of how human action can harm the environment. Locals hoped his presence would make a difference.

“Your holiness, climate change is real,” Bob Dadae, the governor general of Papua New Guinea, told Francis at a meeting on Saturday. “The rise in the sea level is affecting the livelihoods of our people,” he added, asking for the pope’s support for “global action and advocacy.”

The Times article goes on to make a Canadian connection in the person of Cardinal Michael Czerny, in charge of a Vatican department responsible for promoting human development:

[Czerny] said that the pope’s trip to the Asia Pacific region underlined the urgency of caring for the environment. “It’s shouting out that we have to take our human and environmental responsibilities seriously,” he said.

Again, I commend Pope Francis for his quietly relentless focus on this existential threat and the ways in which he makes connections with scripture, the Creator, and the Incarnation.