How Green Is Pope Leo XIV?
An environmental theologian reveals clues about how the new pope may rise to meet the climate crisis.
According to The Associated Press, “Prevost deepened his ties with interfaith environmental networks like the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative and Indigenous organizations” which place “forest protection and rights at the center of Church concern.” He was also the president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, which connected him with neighboring countries that are also home to the Amazon.
So there’s hope around the world that the new pope may follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Pope Francis, and bring issues of the environment and climate change to the forefront of his agenda.
Erin Lothes is an environmental theologian and former professor of Catholic theology who now promotes global eco-spirituality education and climate action with the Laudato Si’ Movement, named for Pope Francis’ ecological encyclical. She is the author of Inspired Sustainability: Planting Seeds for Action, about what inspired successful interfaith care for creation. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AYNSLEY O’NEILL: What have we heard so far from Pope Leo about the environment?
ERIN LOTHES: When Robert Francis Prevost was still cardinal in 2024, he attended a conference in Rome on the environmental crisis, and in his remarks, he stressed that it’s time to move from words to action, and that we must find our guidance from Catholic social teaching, which includes Rerum Novarum from 1891 all the way up to Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum.
He further said that dominion over nature should not become tyrannical—a critique of this commonly heard [statement] that we are stewards, we have dominion. This is a false interpretation of the Bible, and it’s been denounced by Pope Francis and by countless theologians.
He also said that there must be a relationship of reciprocity with the environment of mutual care. That is that beautiful recognition that we depend on the environment for all our sustenance, and today, the environment needs us to do our part and care for it.
Likewise, he cautioned against the harmful consequences of technological development, and this is a clear pillar of Catholic teaching about the environment. Technology is a blessing. The products of human ingenuity and engineering are a gift that makes life easier, healthier, safer, more dignified—yet technology can go out of control. We can have technologies with harmful impacts. And so just because something is new, that doesn’t mean it’s progress. We need to ethically and culturally evaluate every new technology and see if it brings about the common good.
So he emphasized how Vatican City has committed to protecting the environment, like installing solar panels and shifting to electric vehicles. Those are some of his clear public on-the-record statements about the environment.
O’NEILL: From what I’ve read so far, it seems like he aligns with Pope Francis on a few key issues. What are his marching orders as he inherits Pope Francis’ legacy? And of course, what part of that portfolio is the climate emergency?
LOTHES: Listening to others is one of his top agendas—as you say, his marching orders from Pope Francis.
Pope Francis opened up the entire church to a listening process, which is such a new moment in the church. This was called the synodal process, which means walking together the Synod. He invited every single Catholic in every parish around the world to meet together, to listen to each other in roundtable discussions, to take notes and pass that up to the bishop, to pass that up to the national Bishops’ Conference, to pass that up to Rome.
It’s this unthinkable gathering of the thoughts and hopes and dreams of the ordinary Catholic to share what’s so precious about their faith. This synodal process has been going on for years, and really from his dying days, Pope Francis called for the Synod to continue.
In his opening message from the balcony in Rome, Pope Leo said, “Let us walk together,” and that is a very clear reference to the ongoing desire to continue this listening process, this common, shared, humble listening process.
O’NEILL: Why did he choose the name Leo? And for that matter, what was Pope Leo XIII known for?
LOTHES: It’s so significant. As soon as we all heard the name Leo the XIV, so many values and images lept into mind. It’s just as when Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis, everybody caught their breath. There was never a Pope Francis—never, ever—in 2,013 years.
And we know what it meant: St. Francis is the patron of ecology. He was this humble, radical man who called the wolf his brother and the water his sister. So it was almost shocking.
Leo the XIII, he is most known for his teaching lesson, his encyclical Rerum Novarum, which means “on new things,” or maybe “on revolutionary change.” Writing in 1891, Pope Leo was aware of the suffering of urban poverty, of the needs of workers, of the crises that came with factories and smoke stacks and child labor and the struggle for fair wages and the needs for workers to have representation vis-a-vis the owners of factories, and he advocated for them to be able to care for their needs. This document is recognized as the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching.
For Cardinal Prevost to choose the name Leo XIV, he’s saying that he will continue this concern for the poor in a new situation, in the poverty and in the crises of today, this concern for the poor, especially for new crises and critiques of the excesses of hyper-neoliberal capitalism, are implied in this name.
O’NEILL: What would you say is the influence or the role that a pope takes in times of emergency, like the climate crisis that we’re facing right now?
LOTHES: There is a lot of influence that a pope can have. Many see the pope as a most visible moral authority, given that he is the one single leader of a very, very large religious community. So for one thing, he has the world’s biggest pulpit. He has the greatest capacity to preach care of creation to the world. He has the ability to engage all the bishops of the world, which embrace a population of 1.4 billion Catholics. That’s on the practical level.
The pope can also speak to the political and diplomatic community, as Pope Francis did: attending global conferences, coming to speak to the Congress of the United States, as he did. He hoped to attend the last [climate change] COP, but unfortunately he was not well; but those are the things they can do. By issuing Laudato Si’ right before the Paris conference, Francis deliberately and effectively influenced the outcome of that historic gathering.
Pope Francis engaged with the heads of oil corporations. He invited them to his office and had a meeting with the executives of fossil fuel companies. This is an astonishing direct engagement, and that’s something that very few groups can do in a moral sense.
So there’s a lot of influence that the pope has, and as an American Pope, Leo XIV will have an even more intense capacity to engage successfully from within our culture, as someone who not only understands it, but lives it and can’t be dismissed as someone from the Global South, from a developing nation, someone influenced by liberation theology. Here’s a person who grew up in our American democratic capitalism in the best sense, and is fully capable of engaging it very directly.
O’NEILL: From a sort of broad perspective, what is the connection between the Catholic faith and the environment and the climate?
LOTHES: First of all, just honoring our life, our existence on this planet, is an act of faith. And then in the sense of our interdependence with all creatures, we are here to care for each other, to care for our neighbor.
In a time of climate crisis, that means attending to healing the wounds of the planet and the degradation of the planet that is challenging the well-being and the health and the survival of people all over the world.
The great command that Jesus taught is to love your neighbor as yourself. We can’t do that anymore without caring for creation, because the damage done to creation is undermining the well-being of the neighbor.
What Pope Francis stated so beautifully and clearly in Laudato Si’ is there’s a third dimension. He just put it out there. We love God, we love our neighbor, and we have to care for creation: These are interrelated relationships. The teaching is clear. It’s part of Catholic social teaching. It’s recognized as a moral obligation for all Christians, just as so many faith traditions around the world have clear teachings about the need to care for creation and to care for our brothers and sisters.
Cover photo: Newly elected Pope Leo XIV arrives on the central balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica for the first time after the cardinals ended the conclave in the Vatican on May 8. Credit: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images
