On Friday, the website Axios reported that Pope Francis will host a meeting with investors and executives from major oil companies to discuss issues surrounding so-called climate change and what can and should be done about it.
Slated to attend are Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager; Robert Dudley, the group chief executive of BP; Eldar Saetre, CEO of Equinor, Norway’s state-owned energy company; and Ernest Moniz, the former U.S. Energy Secretary under President Obama. More participants are expected to attend as well.
The announcement of the summit comes one year after President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords, a non-binding agreement meant to have nations voluntarily cut carbon emissions, which would theoretically hold global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius. The meeting may signal a willingness by the pope to bypass government entities in favor of addressing private businesses, who are said to be responsible for carbon emissions, when dealing with so-called climate change.
Pope Francis has long held to the climate alarmists’ version of global warming. Three years ago, he took the unusual step of issuing an encyclical to all Catholic bishops worldwide, detailing the dangers of global warming and calling for dialogue and action on it.
From the encyclical: “These situations have caused sister earth, along with all the abandoned of our world, to cry out, pleading that we take another course. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years. Yet, we are called to be instruments of God our Father, so that our planet might be what he desired when he created it and correspond with his plan for peace, beauty and fullness.”
Setting aside the pope’s personification of Earth (sister earth? Isn’t that more of a Pagan or New Age type of thing to say?), it seems as though he has swallowed hook, line, and sinker, the climate alarmists’ view of climate change. Instead of looking to God for answers, this pope is content to listen to the scientific consensus about the issue.
During Hurricane Irma’s landfall last year, Pope Francis took direct aim at “climate deniers,” by saying, “Anyone who denies [climate change] should go to the scientists and ask them. They speak very clearly…. Climate change is having an effect, and scientists are telling us which path to follow. And we have a responsibility — all of us, everyone great or small has a moral responsibility…. We must take it seriously…. History will judge our decision.”
Traditional Catholics must wonder what to think of Pope Francis and his social-justice warrior, Earth-worshipping ways. While he prepares to meet with big oil executives about the completely theoretical issue of man-caused climate change, he has yet to even address last week’s vote in Ireland to amend its constitution to allow for legal abortions. Leading up to the vote, the pontiff made no effort to encourage Catholics in Ireland to uphold the ban. Why the silence on that, especially when a papal pronouncement might have had some effect on the vote in the predominantly Catholic country? Are Catholics still pro-life or not?
And there are other issues that Pope Francis should be addressing before even concerning himself with climate change. Christians in the Middle East and North Korea are being persecuted, tortured, and killed for their faith. Shouldn’t Pope Francis be using his bully-pulpit to denounce that? Instead of big oil executives, shouldn’t he try to bring Kim Jong-un, Hassan Rhouhani of Iran, and Fuad Masum of Iraq to the table instead of Exxon-Mobil?
Since Pope Francis ascended to the papacy in 2013, he has edged Catholicism ever more leftward. In addition to his socialistic activism on climate change, he has eschewed the Genesis account of creation in favor of Darwin and the Big Bang, has been anti-capitalist, and, as mentioned, ignored the Irish abortion issue. It makes you wonder if, back in 2013, the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics understood that they were getting a left-wing ideologue as their new spiritual leader.
Photo of Pope Francis: Jeffrey Bruno via Wikimedia
