Pope’s latest green decree a potential fire-starter at Synod

The new encyclical will be published on October 4 putting environmental and economic policy centre stage at the meeting.

Francis steps into the popemobile at the Vatican on Saturday. Picture: AFP

Pope Francis will publish a new encyclical on the environment next month as a follow-up to his controversial 2015 green encyclical, Laudato Si (Praise Be).

The new encyclical will be published on October 4, the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, coinciding with the opening of an international Synod on Synodality at the Vatican putting environmental and economic policy centre stage at the three-week meeting. It will be attended by 400 bishops and lay people from around the world.

In a message on the Vatican news site, the pontiff called for “our hearts, our lifestyles, and the public policies ruling our societies” to be transformed.

“It is necessary to stand with the victims of environmental and climate injustice, striving to end the senseless war on our common home, which is a terrible world war,’’ Francis said. On our “shared synodal journey’’, may we “live, work, and pray so that our common home will teem with life once again”.

Laudato Si, was ghostwritten by Argentinian Victor Manuel Fernandez, the church’s new doctrinal chief (the role held by Joseph Ratzinger under Pope John Paul II). Archbishop Fernandez, famous for his erotic long-form poem, The Art of Kissing, Heal Me with Your Mouth, will be promoted to cardinal on September 30.

In a recent statement, Holy See press office director Matteo Bruni said the updated version of Laudato Si will focus on the recent extreme weather events and catastrophes affecting people on five continents. The original encyclical was a radical vindication of extreme green-left attitudes, largely rejecting the role of markets and technology, including trade in carbon credits, in finding solutions to climate change. It demanded “ecological conversion’’ and “enforceable international agreements’’ on environmental issues. A “’decrease in the pace of production and consumption” could lead to a better form of progress, he argued. “The time has come to accept decreased growth in some parts of the world.”

Next month’s Synod will be followed by a second Synod in October next year, which will make recommendations to the Pope. Five Australian bishops will attend: archbishops Timothy Costelloe (Perth), Anthony Fisher (Sydney) and Patrick O’Reagan (Adelaide), and bishops Shane Mackinlay (Sandhurst) and Anthony Randazzo (Broken Bay). Five lay academics and church officials will also attend.

The Synod is likely to draw out sharply contrasting views. Its relator-general appointed by Francis – Luxembourg’s Jesuit cardinal, Jean-Claude Hollerich – has argued that church teaching opposing gay sex is wrong and not based in science. Some will be pushing for blessings for same-sex unions and a female diaconate.

But German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, whom Francis has invited, has warned the event must not become “a political dance around the golden calf of the agnostic spirit of the time”. It needed to promote that salvation is in Jesus Christ and not in the Great Reset.