VATICAN The Holy See adheres to the Climate Convention and the Paris Agreement

In this way, it hopes to collaborate and support the efforts of the States to face the environmental issue and climate change. Monsignor Caccia presented the document to the UN Secretary General on July 6. The transition towards a development model “based on solidarity and responsibility”.

Vatican City () – The Holy See formally adheres to the Climate Convention and the Paris Agreement. In a note published today in the bulletin of the Press Office it is stated that “the Holy See intends to contribute and give its moral support to the efforts of all States to cooperate […] in an effective and appropriate response to the challenges that climate change poses to our humanity and our common home”. On July 6, the permanent observer to the UN, Monsignor Gabriele Giordano Caccia, presented the document to the UN Secretary General with which the Holy See adheres to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In the recent past, Pope Francis has intervened on several occasions, highlighting the importance of environmental issues, an issue that requires “honesty, responsibility and courage” in a landscape that is increasingly “desperate” for the earth and its poor. . “These challenges”, underlines the Vatican statement, “have not only environmental relevance, but also ethical, social, economic and political, since they mainly affect the lives of the poorest and most fragile”. Hence the need to “promote, with a collective commitment and solidarity, a culture of care, which puts human dignity and the common good at the center”.

Taking up the Pope’s “urgent invitation” to “renew the dialogue on the way we are building the future of the planet”, the declaration recalls the “need” that is also underlined in Laudato si’ “for a confrontation that unites us all , because the environmental challenge we are experiencing, and its human roots, concern us and affect us all”.

Continuing with the quotation from the papal encyclical dedicated to the environment, the Holy See “hopes that the Convention and the Paris Agreement can help promote a strong convergence of all” to “initiate, with decision and conviction, a change of course capable to move from the ‘culture of discarding’ that prevails in our society to a ‘culture of care’ for our common home and for those who live or will live in it”.

“Humanity”, the document concludes, “has the means to face this transformation, which requires a true conversion -individual but also community- and the decisive will to undertake this path”. It is about the transition towards a more integral and complete development model, based on solidarity and responsibility: two fundamental values ​​that must support the “application” of conventions, agreements and efforts in the climate field.