The Pope Hosts Cringe ‘Climate Justice’ Event

As a lifelong and devout Catholic, I don’t enjoy criticizing the Pope. I would prefer not to do it. I also don’t especially enjoy the backlash that will inevitably come my way from certain other Catholics, who believe that I am behaving inappropriately, or even committing a sin, by issuing these criticisms publicly. If anyone feels that way, I won’t be able to convince you otherwise. But I have to do what I believe is the right thing. And in a time when we simply cannot rely on church leadership to actually lead with moral clarity, it falls on the rest of us to speak up. The other option is to be silent, or to pretend that we’re okay with something that is very obviously not okay. And I have no interest in trying to convince myself that the latter is the correct course of action. So here we are.

After a 30-day-stretch in which one of the most prominent Christians in the country was murdered in front of the entire world, prompting thousands of public celebrations — a murder that was bookended by mass shootings at two churches, one of which was targeted by a trans-identifying terrorist who explicitly despised Jesus Christ — you might hope that Christian leaders throughout the world, and in all positions, would be focused on that crisis. 

That’s especially true since, in Nigeria, Christians are currently being systematically slaughtered by Islamists, in a genocide that’s been ongoing for many years. This would be the ideal time for the most important Christian leader, the leader of the Catholic Church, the Pope, to say something that might reassure Christians and Catholics, who are increasingly being targeted with violence because of their faith. Christians need moral guidance, now more than any other time in recent memory.

But that’s just not the approach Pope Leo has decided to take. As I discussed on my podcast the other day, he gave a profoundly bad answer when he was asked about Dick Durbin’s “Lifetime Achievement Award.”

First, the Pope stated that you’re not “pro-life” if you support the death penalty — a position that contradicts scripture, Catholic tradition, and any semblance of moral logic. He suggested that, although Durbin supported and enabled the mass murder of children, overall, he had a pretty great career, if you forget about all the baby killing.

Then, in the next breath, the Pope suggested that you’re not really “pro-life” if you don’t open the borders to hordes of illegal aliens from the third world. With respect, and as charitably as I can, I would say that these are the kinds of ideas that are very compelling to posters on Reddit. There is just no getting around the fact that the statement he issued on this subject could have come from any random NGO spokeswoman or Democrat politician, and that’s what makes it so disturbing.

Unfortunately for Catholics who would prefer to think of that moment as a blip on the radar screen, and not indicative of any deeper or more serious problem, we now have another Pope Leo moment that we need to discuss. He just appeared at the Vatican’s latest international conference in Italy, which was entitled “Raising Hope for Climate Justice.”

Already, just from the name of this event, you know this is going to be something extremely problematic. The only people who use terms like “climate justice” and “environmental justice,” without exception, are communists who also prattle on about “equity,” “unhoused folks,” and “racial justice.” This is language that, by design, identifies the speaker as a committed “true believer,” someone whose sole purpose is advancing Leftist ideology. No Catholic — let alone a Catholic in a position of leadership, let alone the Pope — should be using or endorsing the term “climate justice.” It is a communist term. It is a term with deep and very bad political implications. 

And indeed, the footage of this event bears that out.

You may have seen this viral moment from the conference, in which the Pope blesses a block of ice, to the delight of all the climate hippies surrounding him. Watch: 

Credit: Vatican Media/X.com

Now, in a vacuum, there is of course nothing wrong with the Pope blessing something, least of all water — or frozen water in this case. But the context makes this scene very troubling. Pope Leo blesses a block of ice and then stands there while a bunch of communist weirdos do some kind of weird, Earth-worshipping hippy ritual. And yes, your eyes weren’t deceiving you: Arnold Schwarzenegger was there, flapping the Playground Parachute around as the incantations got going. More on Schwarzenegger’s role in a moment.

For now, it needs to be said that the leader of the Catholic Church shouldn’t be anywhere near this nonsense. It’s not just cringe and embarrassing, it’s scandalous to any non-Catholic who sees this and thinks that this event represents Catholicism in any way. The conference began with a speaker who stated that the event was “directly connected to COP 30,” the UN climate summit. He also talks about “the cry of the Earth” and “the cry of the poor,” which was the theme of the event.

Left-wing climate activism always has heavy undertones of Gaia worship, which is just one of the reasons why Catholics should stay far away from it. And this event was no exception. Watch:

Credit: Vatican News/YouTube.com

On one level, you want to laugh as the various members of the audience are checking their watches, and staring blankly ahead, while these middle-aged hippies declare that they want “peace.” You might wonder, what does “peace” have to do with the climate? And who cares if random women want “peace”? And what exactly is the point of any of this? Who is this supposed to appeal to? Why is any of this happening?

But really, it’s not particularly funny, nor is it worth joking about. When Christians are being slaughtered, the appropriate response is not to host a “Dollar Store Woodstock” with The Pope. And yet, at no point did anyone at this conference demonstrate any interest in defending Catholics from the actual threats they’re facing. Instead, speakers lined up, one by one, to insist that the weather is going to kill us all. One of these speakers was the actor and former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. When he was done playing with the Playground Parachute, he took the podium and delivered an address.

Before we play his remarks, in case it’s not obvious, Schwarzenegger should not have been invited to speak at this event. I have no idea if he’s a Catholic or not, but he did go on record recently suggesting that heaven is a “fantasy,” so the odds aren’t looking great. But more importantly, Schwarzenegger’s intentions were very transparent. He sees Catholics as a very large demographic that he can co-opt, en masse, for his environmentalist project. Watch:

Credit: Vatican News/X.com

One thing you’ll notice about this speech is that Arnold has a tendency to say “think about that,” right after he says something that you absolutely, unequivocally do not need to think about. The idea that the Pope is a “hero” because he had solar panels installed at the Vatican is one of those lines no one should ever think about, ever again, in any context. But the earlier part of Schwarzenegger’s speech — the one where he says he wants every Catholic in the world to join his environmental movement — is the bigger tell. It’s pretty clear that he views the size of the Catholic church — rather than its dogma — as its key asset. And he wants to take advantage of that asset, for his own manipulative and cynical reasons.

What made this whole event so galling — one of the things, anyway — is how rote and predictable the whole thing was. They’re all channeling the same language that Greta Thunberg was using five years ago, before she decided that Gaza was more important than “climate change.” (And it’s obvious why she made that decision. After all, it’s pretty hard to talk about how the world is going to end in 5 years, for your entire career. Sooner or later, people will realize the world is still around.)

If Greta accomplished anything, it’s making clear that, when Leftists talk about “climate justice,” they’re not really talking about the climate at all. They’re talking about communism. They’re talking about destroying the West and eradicating all of the supposedly oppressive institutions — including the family and the Church. 

This is from an article that Greta Thunberg wrote just a few years ago.

Why We Strike Again. Nov 29, 2019. Greta Thunberg, Luisa Neubauer, and Angela Valenzuela. Project-Syndicate.org.

It reads: “Schoolchildren, young people, and adults all over the world will stand together, demanding that our leaders take action – not because we want them to, but because the science demands it. That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.”

This is what Leftists mean when they say “climate justice.” This is what it always means. It never means, and can never mean, anything else. They want to “dismantle” everything. It’s why they oppose nuclear power, even though it would eliminate all of their concerns about “greenhouse gases,” while providing affordable energy to tens of millions of people who desperately need it. Leftists seek to dismantle Western civilization. Every single one of their pet projects — from racial justice to climate justice to immigration justice to homeless justice to employment justice and so on — is merely a different front for the same objective.

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Climate justice is an inherently left-wing political concept. It comes bundled with every other leftist project.

Which is why, for example, if you go to the website for UN Women, you’ll find this: 

Feminist climate justice brings a gender lens to the fight against climate change, acknowledging how the drivers of the climate crisis are also the drivers of gender inequalities… While women and girls experience disproportionate impacts from climate change at the global level, the effects are not uniform.

And this:

Looking at climate change through the lens of intersectional feminism – meaning, the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other – it is clear that climate change risks are acute for Indigenous and Afro-descendent women and girls, older women, LGBTIQ+ people, women and girls with disabilities, migrant women, and those living in rural, remote, conflict and disaster-prone areas. “If you are invisible in everyday life, your needs will not be thought of, let alone addressed, in a crisis situation,” says Matcha Phorn-in, a lesbian feminist human-rights defender who works to empower stateless and landless Indigenous women, girls and young LGBTIQ+ people in Thailand’s Chiang Mai, Mae Hong Son, and Tak provinces. “Humanitarian programmes tend to be heteronormative and can reinforce the patriarchal structure of society if they do not take into account sexual and gender diversity,” Phorn-in explains.

If you go to the website for Greenpeace, you’ll be told this:

We at Greenpeace are often asked, why is an environmental organisation talking about LGBTQIA2S+ issues? What does queer justice have to do with climate change? Why don’t you stay in your environmental lane? Because the fight for environmental justice cannot be achieved without the fight for LGBTQIA2S+ rights – and the fight for social and racial justice, and gender equality. As we tackle the crises of climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity, we must also address social issues of inequality and discrimination. There is no justice if there is no liberation for all. Marginalised communities suffer the most in the climate crisis and during times of disasters. Further marginalised groups within the diverse LGBTQIA2S+ community, especially people of colour and low-income communities, experience even greater impacts of climate and environmental injustice.

I could go on. The point is that this is a package deal. Climate justice comes with LGBT, feminism, and all the rest of it. It has always been this way. This is what the climate justice movement is, and has always been since its inception, at its core.

That’s why Christians — especially Christian leaders — shouldn’t be anywhere near it. That’s not to say that Christians shouldn’t love God’s creation and seek to preserve and protect it. Of course, everyone can agree with that. But the “climate justice” movement is a left-wing political movement, and its goals — very explicitly — are the destruction of Western civilization, starting with the Church itself.

If the Pope is going to gather a bunch of climate justice activists together in a room, it should be to rebuke them for being anti-human communists. That’s the kind of leadership we need. And it’s the kind of leadership we must demand.