Pope urges oil executives to convert to clean fuel

Neil Thorns, Director of Advocacy at CAFOD: 'If energy companies are serious about caring for our common home, they need to take Pope's advice'

Source: Vatican Media

Pope Francis on Saturday addressed participants at a Vatican conference dedicated to the need for a transition to clean energy.

Addressing some 40 participants in a Vatican conference dedicated to "Energy Transition and Care for our Common Home", Pope Francis said "civiliazation requires energy but energy use must not destroy civilization". The two-day conference that wrapped up on Saturday, was promoted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in collaboration with Notre Dame University.

It saw the participation of senior executives of leading oil and gas companies including ExxonMobil, Eni, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Equinor and Pemex.In his speech, the Pope told them that climate change was a challenge of "epochal proportions" and said that the world needs to come up with an energy mix that combats pollution, eliminates poverty and promotes social justice.

He said that modern society with its "massive movement of information, persons and things requires an immense supply of energy," and still, he pointed out, as many as one billion people lack electricity.

Meeting the energy needs of everyone on Earth, he said, must be done in ways "that avoid creating environmental imbalances resulting in deterioration and pollution gravely harmful to our human family, both now and in the future."

The Pope concluded his address quoting from his Encyclical Laudato Sì: "There is no time to lose: We received the earth as a garden-home from the Creator; let us not pass it on to future generations as a wilderness".

Neil Thorns, Director of Advocacy at CAFOD, said: "The Holy Father wrote in Laudato Si' that he wanted to 'enter into dialogue with all people about our common home'. Preaching to the not-yet-converted at this week's meeting is an example of the Church doing exactly this.

"Francis reminds us in his encyclical that 'Business is a noble vocation', but also asks why anyone would want to be remembered for failing to act when the world's poorest people are being pushed deeper into poverty by climate change. It's a question fossil fuel executives would do well to ask themselves.

"If energy companies are serious about caring for our common home, they need to take the Pope's advice and hurry up with shifting their priorities - and therefore their money - from fossil fuels to renewables."

Read the full text of Pope Francis' address here: www.indcatholicnews.com/news/35068