Remembering Pope Francis on Earth Day: How He Linked Capitalism, Climate & Catholicism

AMY GOODMAN: The Vatican has announced the funeral for Pope Francis will take place Saturday in what is expected to be a scaled-down ceremony. In his will, Pope Francis asked to be buried in what he called a “simple tomb” at Saint Mary Major Basilica. Cardinals around the world are heading to the Vatican for the funeral and then to pick the pope’s successor. Pope Francis died Monday at the age of 88 of stroke and heart failure. He made his last public appearance on Easter Sunday, when he repeated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Today, on this Earth Day, we look at Pope Francis’s long record calling for action on the climate crisis. On Monday, the top United Nations official on climate change, Simon Stiell, remembered Pope Francis as a, quote, “towering figure of human dignity, and an unflinching global champion of climate action,” unquote.

In 2015, the pope issued a groundbreaking papal letter, or encyclical, on the climate crisis, where he wrote, quote, “The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.” The pope openly criticized the role of wealthy nations in causing the climate crisis, writing, quote, “The idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology … is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit,” he said.

In 2015, Pope Francis made a plea to address the climate crisis when he spoke at the White House.

POPE FRANCIS: When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history. We still have time to make the change needed to bring about a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of the world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Pope Francis speaking in 2015.

We’re joined now by Nathan Schneider, professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, also a contributing writer at America magazine, a national Catholic magazine published by the Jesuits, where he’s been covering Catholic engagement with climate change and the economy.

Nathan Schneider, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s beautiful to see that mountainous backdrop as we once again talk about the pope, who died on Monday. He was the first Latin American pope. He was the first Jesuit pope. If you can first, before we get into the environment, talk about the significance of his reign?

NATHAN SCHNEIDER: Thank you for having me. It’s good to be with you again.

Pope Francis’s papacy is a historic moment in the time — in the history of the church, something that I hope will be a beginning, rather than, now in his passing, an end. It was a return, in many respects, to, I think, the heart of the Gospel and the heart of the Christian message, which is simplicity and humility and a call for peace and for love and solidarity among people.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nathan, can you talk about the significance of his encyclical on the climate and this critique of what’s accepted wisdom in modern society that economic — technological advancement and economic growth are the key to nations being prosperous?

NATHAN SCHNEIDER: Absolutely. You know, when I first read this document, Laudato Si’, when it came out, I remember tears coming to my eyes because of the force of the way in which he brought together the riches of Christian and Catholic tradition to bear with the prophetic work of social movements around the world in confronting a global crisis that we’re facing, and that so many of the elites in the world we live in today are determined to ignore or, you know, outright worsen. His message was, again, drawing on the prophetic messages of social movements, recognized that the climate crisis is not merely an environmental crisis. It’s not merely about the things other than the human. It is deeply intertwined with justice in our human world, justice for the poor. The poor are the people who suffer the most from climate change, and the wealthy are those who are most responsible for perpetrating it.

And so, this idea that is central to the encyclical, the idea of integral ecology, is about insisting on that connection, insisting that justice with the Earth, our relationship with the Earth, depends on justice among people, and that in order to address this environmental crisis, we need to also address the crisis of disposability, of treating not only the planet, but each other, as disposable, and that when we see these two together, we actually recognize not just that we’ve been bad, that we’ve done bad things, but actually there are so many things we can do. One of my favorite lines in Laudato Si’ is this exclamation he makes that, “Truly, much can be done!” And he says that because he had been watching social movements around the world building cooperatives, building economic alternatives, using renewable energy, building sustainable alternatives to the dominant paradigm. And so, it’s really a document of hope, above all. And it’s that hope that was his overriding spirit.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering also — much has been made of the fact that he was the first pope from the Global South, but he was also the first Jesuit pope. And could you talk a little bit in terms of the history of the Jesuits within the Catholic Church? Of course, historically, they were expelled during the colonial era, the early colonial era, from the Americas.

NATHAN SCHNEIDER: You know, the Jesuits have a long history, but throughout that history, they’ve been a missionary order, going to the far reaches of the world — and in the process, learning from the world. One thing that Pope Francis talked about a lot was the peripheries, trying to turn the church outward to learning from the experience of people not just in Rome, not just in Europe, but in Latin America, in the Philippines, in the places that are often most vulnerable to the injustices of our world. He brought people from the Amazon to share their wisdom and their experience with faith in Rome.

And so, over and over, he was seeing the peripheries as a source of truth, not just the center of the church. And that is a kind of outgrowth of this long legacy of Jesuits going out to the far reaches of the world, learning the cultures that they found themselves among, and developing a kind of respect, developing an understanding of the Catholic faith that is not just one person talking to another, telling another what to do, but actually learning from our encounter with one another, recognizing that our faith is an experience of ongoing revelation.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Pope Francis in his own words. He spoke to CBS host Norah O’Donnell last year about the climate crisis. His remarks were voiced over.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] Climate change at this moment is a road to death. A road to death, eh? And it is an artificial climate change, no? Something provoked, not the normal climate change, right?

NORAH O’DONNELL: You have placed blame on wealthy countries.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] In great measure, yes, because they are the ones that have more of an economy and an energy based on fossil fuels that are creating the situation, right? They are the countries that can make the most difference, given their industry and all, aren’t they? But it is very difficult to create an awareness of this. They hold a conference, everybody is in agreement, they all sign, and then bye-bye.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was the pope several years ago. When President Trump saw him — he saw him only once; I think it was in 2017 — the pope presented Trump with a copy of that climate encyclical from 2015, very much interpreted as an attempt by the pope to encourage Trump to take on the issue in a different way. Of course, the mantra of the Trump administration is “drill, baby, drill.” And the pope is very direct about the connection between capitalism and the destruction of the environment. Can you elaborate further, Nathan?

NATHAN SCHNEIDER: Absolutely. You know, and I think it’s really important to see these two figures together at this moment, where we’re losing one, and one is very much on the rise. You know, one thing that Francis was deeply concerned about was the building of walls, building walls higher, which was, of course, Trump’s initial platform in coming to office back in 2016, 2017, and continues to be the kind of logic of his approach to governance.

Francis wrote, for instance, another letter in 2020, Fratelli Tutti, calling for people to find solidarity across lines. He saw capitalism and militarism and the militarized borders as all part of a common turn away from the solidarity that we are called for, called to, the love for one another that should be our aim, even if we can’t always practice it perfectly, to at least make it the aim in our lives. And he saw the outgrowth of migrant crises in Europe and in the United States, where people are seeking migration just to be able to have a chance at life for themselves and their families, as intertwined with a climate crisis that is driving people to move from one place to another. And he called over and over for an approach to our politics in our own countries built on solidarity, as well as a solidarity that crosses borders.

In many respects, I think he was an iconoclast, in the sense of taking down the idols of our world, the idols, the things that we think are real that really aren’t, the borders that are built around imaginary lines, the rules of capitalism that encourage us to privilege financial returns over human good and the cry of the poor, as he so often put it. And so, for him, the Christian message is, above all, a call to take down the idols and to see the opportunities for love and for solidarity that are actually right in front of us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Nathan, briefly, the issue of his encyclical on climate being directed not just at members of the church, but he said that protecting the planet is a moral and ethical imperative for believers and nonbelievers alike. The importance of his addressing people of other faiths, as well, in that encyclical?

NATHAN SCHNEIDER: Absolutely. He addressed that encyclical, as you said, to all people of the world. And one thing that is evident in the encyclical, as well, and in his other writings is the way in which he’s listening to people of the world, not just Catholics. So he’s quoting people in the encyclical who are not just Catholic leaders, but recognizing that the Catholic social teaching can learn from everybody and that he wanted to enter into a dialogue with people of the world.

And in some respects, that message was heard better outside of the Catholic Church than inside. There are still many contexts where Catholics are resisting this call to ecological conversion and to an integral ecology, as he put it, where Catholics are caught up in the very patterns of environmental destruction and social injustice that he was calling out.

And I think he knew that this is a challenge and a task that would require more than just, you know, the flock that he shepherds. And again, I think that’s a very Christian thing to do. You know, Jesus, in his ministry, often went to the peripheries, reached outside of the Jewish people, spoke to people and learned from people and held up people who were not part of his particular social group. And that’s something that I think Francis is echoing in turning to a dialogue with the world, recognizing that, in some respects, his own people are part of the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, 30 seconds, the successors who are being talked about, you know, the conclave will decide, you’ve got two front-runners from the Philippines, among them, Luis Antonio Tagle; Pietro Parolin of Italy; Peter Turkson, Ghana; a front-runner from Hungary; and another from Italy. Your thoughts on where this goes?

NATHAN SCHNEIDER: You know, it’s a complex process, and I don’t claim any special insight in it. But I do think this is at a really critical moment for moral leadership in the world, at a time where we are tempted to put up more walls among our people and among countries, that the selection of this next pope will be — you know, could be a turning point in deciding whether we, as a species, turn toward solidarity or build our walls even higher.

AMY GOODMAN: Nathan Schneider, we thank you so much for being with us, professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder — we’ll link your articles in America magazine, a national Catholic magazine published by the Jesuits — long been covering Catholic engagement with climate change and the economy, co-editor of the book Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation.

Next up, we speak with the lawyer for Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts doctoral student who was abducted by masked federal agents and ultimately sent to Louisiana. A judge has ordered her to be transferred to Vermont. Stay with us.