Rome: An Apostolic Exhortation to Be Published October 4

The audience took place in the Clementine Hall, in the Vatican, before some 200 participants in the meeting of rectors of public and private universities from Latin America and the Caribbean, promoted by the Red de Universidades para el Cuidado de la Casa Común (Ruc) and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

Francis called for alternatives to help overcome the environmental crisis and cited as an example the use of solar panels to provide electricity in several Vatican buildings including the Paul VI Hall.

“We have to be very creative in these areas to protect nature,” because electricity is obviously produced from coal or other elements, which always create problems in nature itself, and “the young people we form must become leaders who are convinced on this point.”

In his reflection, the Pope also announced the name of his next apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, which will be published on October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi: “it will be a look at what has happened and say what needs to be done,” he said.

Francis denounced the process of degradation that humanity is undergoing: “There is a process of environmental degradation, we can say that in general. But it leads down, towards the bottom of the ravine. Deterioration of living conditions, degradation of the values which justify these living conditions, because they go together.”

And he explains that “inequality” is also “evident in the lack of access to basic necessities, and from there flows all these visions which sociologically, in fact, without naming them, make women, indigenous peoples, Africans, people with less capacity.”

One of the forms of degradation and inequality denounced by Pope Francis is “extractivism,” that is, the appropriation of natural resources. “When this ‘extractivist’ model advances and gets into people,” he emphasized, “I extract dignity from people, and that happens.

“A ‘extractivist’ geological model, so to speak, is never isolated, it is always accompanied by the human ‘extractivist’ model. The dignity of the person is extracted, reducing him or her to a slave.”

On Monday, August 21 the Pope had already mentioned that he was writing a second part of his encyclical Laudato si’ to a delegation of lawyers, from 25 member countries of the Council of Europe, who signed the Vienna Appeal on June 11, 2022.

“I am in the process of writing a second part of Laudato Si’ for an update on the current issues.” He did not give further details on this sequel. But Matteo Bruni, the director of the Holy See's Press Office, stressed that this is a letter that aims to respond in particular to the recent environmental crises.