Pope and president offer very different views about the planet

Pope Francis and President Donald Trump cannot both be right about climate change and the environment

By Joseph Bonasia

April 15, 2025 

“Now, faced as we are with global environmental deterioration, I wish to address every person living on this planet.” 

Few people have the authority of position and character to write such an extraordinary statement as Pope Francis did in his landmark environmental document, Laudato Si’, which was published 10 years ago and is easily the most read papal encyclical in history. 

Laudato Si’ means “praise be to you,” expressing an attitude of awe and gratitude toward God for the natural world. It is subtitled, “On Care for Our Common Home.” 

In it, Pope Francis wrote, “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic (and) political … It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”  

A copy of Laudato Si’ (Johan Bergström-Allen, CC BY 2.0, via flickr)

President Donald Trump, of course, has said climate change is a hoax. 

The pope based his opinion on “solid scientific consensus.” President Trump is removing scientific information about climate change from government websites and is firing scientists from critical agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

The first approach to our climate crisis is an honest one. The other is not and is meant to manipulate public opinion. 

“We know,” Pope Francis wrote, “that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels … especially coal, but also oil, and to lesser degree gas — needs to be progressively replaced without delay.” 

Even though the United States is the world leader in oil and gas production, Trump has declared a national energy emergency and is promoting the increased use of fossil fuels — including coal — and is undermining climate initiatives by freezing $20 billion in grants for clean energy efforts and stopping windmill projects.   

“Reducing greenhouse gasses requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most,” Pope Francis wrote. Under Trump’s directive, the United States, one of the world’s greatest climate polluters, is walking away from the Paris Climate Accord. 

“Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest,” the pope noted. “Today, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” 

Trump has cancelled environmental justice grants and is shutting down environmental justice offices of the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Among those suffering the consequences will be those yet to be born. “The environment,” Pope Francis wrote, “is part of a logic of receptivity. It is on loan to each generation, which must then hand it on to the next.” 

Trump famously derided Greta Thunberg after she spoke to the United Nations General Assembly, criticizing world leaders for their lack of climate action. His policies jeopardize the environmental welfare of future generations. 

“The earth’s resources are also being plundered because of short-sighted approaches to the economy, commerce and production. The loss of forests and woodlands entails the loss of species,” Pope Francis wrote. Each year thousands of species go extinct and “will no longer give glory to God by their very existence … We have no such right,” he affirmed. 

Joseph Bonasia

Trump is opening up 112.5 million acres of national forestland to logging and is looking to undermine one of this nation’s most successful environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act. By changing the definition of “harm” in the law, it could allow such activities as logging and oil drilling in formerly protected habitats upon which species are dependent for their survival.  

Because the stakes are so high, the difference between what Pope Francis advocates regarding care of the natural world and what President Trump advocates is critically important. They both cannot be right, and people have a moral (and, for many, a spiritual) responsibility to choose wisely between the two and then act accordingly.  

Pope Francis (1936-2025) wrote that “humanity still has the ability to work together to build our common home” and that young people “demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded.” 

Joseph Bonasia is a founding board member of the SWFL RESET Center. 

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Pope Leo’s call for climate action builds on past papal efforts

The American-born pope emphasized that confronting climate change is a spiritual imperative and responsibility

By Joseph Bonasia

Oct 15, 2025 

MAGA commentators have labelled Pope Leo XIV a “woke” pope due to his recent comments regarding climate change and his blessing of a melting block of Greenland ice. He was speaking to participants in the “Raising Hope” Conference on the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.”

Lord knows many people are deep in grief and low on hope, given the state of the planet and the direction of U.S. environmental policy.

“Laudato Si’” was the first encyclical — a letter from a pope regarding the teachings of the church — to make the environment its central theme. It addressed climate and other ecological crises and connected them to social justice and economic inequality. The cry of the earth, Francis said, leads to the cry of the poor.

A copy of “Laudato Si'” at a study day of the encyclical (Johan Bergström-Allen, CC BY 2.0, via flickr)

Pope Leo made clear he would build upon Francis’ efforts.

Just days after President Donald Trump told the United Nations that climate change “is the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” Leo, in evident response, said, “Some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming.

“The challenges identified in ‘Laudato Si’,’” he added, “are in fact even more relevant today than they were 10 years ago. These challenges are of a social and political nature, but first and foremost of a spiritual nature: They call for conversion.” 

He said that hearing the cries of the Earth and of the poor should not be “seen and felt as divisive issues.” The swift MAGA backlash bore out his comments about the divisive, social and political nature of caring for the planet in America today.  

MAGA commentators, however, are wrong in believing that the issues and teachings detailed in “Laudato Si’” are the concerns of two “woke” popes. 

The first “Green Pope” was not Francis, but his predecessor, Pope Benedict. About 2,400 solar panels at the Vatican symbolize the importance that this conservative pope placed on environmental issues.  

It was Benedict who, delving into the roots of our environmental crises, proposed “eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and correcting the models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment.”  

Francis cites his predecessor’s writings nearly two dozen times in “Laudato Si’.” In many ways, Benedict “paved the way” for ideas that Francis explored in his encyclical. 

Pope John Paul II, also a conservative pope, warned that human beings frequently seem “to see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption.” The Trump administration fits this description. 

In 1990, before caring for the planet became a cultural and political divide among Americans, and long before “woke” became a common term, John Paul II emphasized that ecological crisis is a moral issue. 

“We cannot,” he said, “interfere in one area of the ecosystem without paying due attention both to the consequences of such interference in other areas and to the well-being of future generations.”  

Predating Francis and Leo by decades, he called for a “genuine conversion in ways of thought and behavior” toward the natural world. 

“Christians, in particular,” he wrote, “realize that their responsibility within creation and their duty towards nature and the Creator are an essential part of their faith.” 

And before John Paul II, Pope Paul VI said, “Due to an ill-considered exploitation of nature, humanity runs the risk of destroying it and becoming in turn a victim of this degradation.” He called for a “radical change in the conduct of humanity.”

Joseph Bonasia

These teachings threaten the MAGA worldview, so they criticize, ridicule and dismiss them the way they do the overwhelming scientific evidence and consensus regarding climate change. Meanwhile, they empower Trump to pursue policies that will cause grievous harm to the planet and people. 

In his “Raising Hope” comments, made to a global audience, Leo urged everyone to pressure governments to pursue more effective climate actions. 

But a greater source of hope for me lies in this American-born pope emphasizing that confronting climate change is a spiritual imperative and responsibility, signaling that ecological teachings and environmental efforts are becoming an ever more prominent focus of the Catholic Church with its 53 million adherents in the U.S. and 1.4 billion worldwide.

“Lord of life,” he said while blessing the block of Greenland ice, “bless this water. May it awaken our hearts, cleanse our indifference, sooth our grief and renew our hope.” 

Amen to that. 

Joseph Bonasia is a founding board member of the SWFL RESET Center. Banner photo: Pope Leo XIV during an audience with the media in May (Edgar Beltrán/The Pillar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons).

Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here. To support The Invading Sea, click here to make a donation. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece to The Invading Sea, email Editor Nathan Crabbe at nc*****@*au.edu.