Pope Francis plans to fight the battles against climate change and poverty

By Alison Lesley --
14 Jan 2015 --

Pope Francis seems to have big plans for 2015, including universal negotiations on the environment and social inequality.

Pope Francis is planning to issue quite a message, one that will be received by more than 1.2 billion members of the Catholic religion around the world. Additionally, he will be giving an address to the UN general assembly, as well as calling a summit of the world’s main religions in New York.

Apparently, the motivation behind his somewhat frantic activity is that the Pope wants to “directly influence” the extremely important upcoming UN climate meeting, which will be held in Paris. At this meeting, countries will be attempting to bring 20 years of laden negotiations on the reduction of emissions to a much-needed conclusion.

The Pope seems to have a lot of backers and support in regard to his efforts and intentions. One of these intentions include the arrangement of a meeting with all of the world’s main religious leaders in a combined effort to extend the awareness of our current climate state as well as the utter calamity of “social exclusion.”

In Tacloban, a city in the Philippines that was all but destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan in 2012, the Pope plans to issue an atypical “encyclical” regarding climate change as well as human ecology. The Pope and his backers are pushing for the end of what is being called the “fossil fuel era.”

Pope Francis is currently attempting to call all devout Catholic followers to action on both moral as well as scientific grounds with the document that is going to be sent to all 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests from across the world. These bishops and priests will distribute the document to Catholic Church parishioners.

Pope Francis is also making plans for the general assembly in New York this coming September, where he will convene with other religious leaders and lobby politicians. At this general assembly, countries will be signing up to new goals involving both anti-poverty issues and the environment.

Last month, in Lima, bishops from every continent expressed their frustration with the stalled climate talks and, for the first time, urged rich countries to act.

However, not everyone agrees with the “radical” actions of Pope Francis concerning his fight for climate change. A number of Vatican conservatives as well as rightwing church circles are part of this group of resistors. They are claiming that the Pope’s environmental radicalism is out of his expertise and that he should not be getting so deeply involved in the political aspects of the issues.

Some of those who are offended by the actions of Pope Francis feel that the climate change arguments are not based around morality, and are more based around economics. Millions of U.S. evangelical Christians are also accusing the US environmental movement of Pope Francis as “un-biblical” and a false religion. A spokesman for the conservative Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation also declared that the Pope should “back off,” and that the Catholic church is correct on the ethical principles but has been misled on the science.