Enough of Ignoring “those on the front line of climate collapse”: SECAM President on Joint Call for “climate justice”

He appealed for “an economy that is not based on the sacrifice of African populations to enrich others”.

“Africa wants to contribute to a future of justice and peace for all mankind”, SECAM President said at the July 1 press conference.

The press conference at the Holy See Press Office provided an opportunity for the presentation of the joint document on “climate justice” ahead of the United Nations’ (UN) climate change conference COP30 scheduled for November 10-21 in Belém, Brazil.

Titled, “A call for climate justice and the common home: ecological conversion, transformation and resistance to false solutions”, the joint document “reiterates the Church’s commitment to climate justice and calls nations and governments to action”, the July 1 Vatican News report notes.

The report also indicates that the joint document, which had been shown to Pope Leo XIV before the press conference is “inspired by the Pontiff’s call to promote an integral ecology” and is consistent with the late Pope Francis’ May 2015 Encyclical Letter on care for our common home, Laudato Si’.

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At the press conference, while Cardinal Ambongo represented SECAM, Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão represented the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC).

The region of Latin America, the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (CELAM), was represented by Cardinal Jaime Spengler.

“Our message today is not diplomatic; it is eminently pastoral. It is a call to conscience in the face of a system that threatens to devour creation, as if the planet were just another commodity,” Cardinal Ferrão has been quoted as saying.

On his part, Cardinal Spengler said he was “raising a voice that is not mine alone, but that of the Amazonian peoples, of the martyrs of the land - we could say of the climate -, and of the riverside, indigenous, Afro-descendant, peasant and urban communities.”

For the Local Ordinary of Brazil’s Porto Alegre Catholic Archdiocee, Rio Grande do Sul, it is urgent “to become aware of the need for changes in lifestyle, production and consumption”.

Meanwhile, Emlice Cuda, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America that coordinated the coming together of the representatives of the various regional Episcopal Conferences, said that “as missionary apostles of an outgoing synodal Church, we will go to COP30 to build peace in the midst of this war in pieces against creation, where many are dying and will die even more if we do not act now.”

“We do so because, as Pope Leo XIV says, the Church 'always seeks to be close, especially to those who suffer,’” she added.

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