Pope praises climate teen Greta Thunberg’s activism

Pope Francis has praised the work of teen climate activist Greta Thunberg for raising the alarm.

Swedish teenage climate campaigner Greta Thunberg with fellow climate activists from the German ‘Fridays for Future’ movement.

Pope Francis has praised the work of pig-tailed Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, for raising the alarm about climate change.

Ms Thunberg, 16, began the “Friday school strike’’ movement outside the Swedish parliament last year, demanding action to reduce greenhouse emissions. The movement, backed by environmental groups, quickly spread around the world.

More recently, the teenager, who has taken a year off school, has expanded her focus to include “flight shaming’’ – a trend identified as a potential threat to the aviation industry and by Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce last week. “Flight shaming’’ involves activists targeting people who travel by air, claiming they are harming the environment.

In an extensive interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa on Friday, the Pontiff said his greatest fears for the planet were “the disappearance of biodiversity, new lethal diseases’’ and “a drift and devastation of nature that can lead to the death of humanity”.

He was more shocked, he said, by the story behind the so-called “Overshoot Day’’, last month. “On July 29th, we used up all the regenerative resources of 2019,’’ Francis said. “From July 30 we started to consume more resources than the planet can regenerate in a year. It’s very serious. It’s a global emergency.’’

Such issues, he said, made the Church’s Amazonian Synod, to be held in Rome in October with a strong environmental theme, an “urgent synod’’.

Francis said he was encouraged by “the movements of young ecologists, such as the one led by Greta Thunberg, ‘Fridays for future’.’’

Pope Francis waves to the faithful during an audience with the participants of the Euromoot meeting on August 3.

Ms Thunberg, who refuses to fly because of what she describes the “enormous climate impact of aviation’’ will cross the Atlantic later this month to participate in UN climate summits in the US and Chile.

German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, who was sacked by Francis in 2017 as head of the church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is one of several cardinals who has strongly criticised the working document for the Amazonian Synod. Cardinal Mueller said the document proposes a “cosmovision” that is “pan-naturalistic” and “similar to Marxism.”

He said the Church must “absolutely reject” expressions such as “ecological conversion” because “there is only conversion to the Lord.”