Pope Leo to MAGA Climate Skeptics: “Repent”

The pope warned that ridiculing global warming is not courage — it’s contempt for the poor and for God’s world.

At a Vatican climate summit marking the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Leo XIV declared the care of creation a fundamental Christian duty.

He even blessed a block of melting glacier as a stark symbol of our warming planet.

Leo presided over the anniversary celebration of Laudato Si’ – the letter that cast care for the planet as “an urgent and existential moral concern.”

On stage amid ferns and ice, he urged the crowd of activists, indigenous leaders, and Arnold Schwarzenegger to press governments for bolder climate action. In Leo’s view, the problems Francis highlighted a decade ago are only more urgent today.

Schwarzenegger declared Leo an “action hero” for his work adding solar panels to Vatican buildings shortly after his May election.

Most striking was Leo’s direct rebuke of climate deniers.

Quoting his predecessor, he lamented that “some have chosen to deride the evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming.”

He warned there is “no room for indifference or resignation” on this issue and explicitly tied care for the planet to care for the poor.

“People of faith cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures,” he said, making clear that true discipleship includes loving even the most fragile of God’s creation.

This was a pointed call to Catholics — and everyone — to rethink any contempt for science or for those who warn of ecological danger.

Leo framed the crisis in spiritual terms.

He asked the assembly: “God will ask us if we have cultivated and cared for the world that he created for future generations. What will be our answer?”

By invoking that challenge, he echoed Francis’s insistence on an “ecological conversion” of heart.

Leo urged that caring for the earth be inseparable from caring for the poor — quoting Francis again that turning ecology into a “passing trend” or a divisive issue betrays the cry of the vulnerable.

In Leo’s words, our generation is being tested on how faithfully we love God’s creation.

In terms of politics, his statements were seen as a strong rebuke of Donald Trump’s climate skepticism.

They came just days after President Trump derided global warming as a “con job” at the UN and after his administration withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.

Not surprisingly, MAGA-aligned conservatives immediately howled.

Professional blogger Matt Walsh snarked that this “woke” pontiff was conducting a “hippy climate ritual” by blessing the ice.

However, Leo’s stance is the opposite of partisan politics: where Trumpists scoff, the pope urges faithful citizens to pressure leaders to make binding climate commitments.

Indeed, Leo pointed out that Francis had championed the 2015 Paris Accord, calling nations to reduce emissions in line with its goals — a vision now continued by Leo’s appeals.

In tandem with Francis, Pope Leo XIV is asserting that caring for our common home is a core part of Catholic identity.

By linking creation-care with love of neighbor and love of God, he has reframed climate action as a moral imperative, not an optional policy.

As he told the conference: “We cannot love God while despising his creatures.”

Pope Leo has made it unmistakable that fighting climate change is a crucial issue of our time — one on which the faithful must take courage and act.

Let’s make sure the MAGA brethren hear it.

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