Message of the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development to the scientific community on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato si’, 24.05.2019
Original message published by The Vatican
The following is the Message of the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, His Eminence Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, to the scientific community on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato si’:
Message
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen of the scientific community,
Some time ago, Pope Francis received some of your colleges, led by the French climatologist Jean Jouzel, a long-serving member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They shared the profound concerns of many scientists, experts in the field, regarding the current climate crisis, caused by man’s interference in nature.
In 2015 I published the Encyclical Letter Laudato si’, [1] moving from concerns about the “cracks in the planet that we inhabit” (LS 163) and hoping to “enter into dialogue with all people about our common home” (LS 3). Its publication was intended to encourage the work of the COP 21 Summit, which led to the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change, aiming to maintain the average increase in the planet’s surface temperature “well below 2°C” and to “intensify efforts” to limit the increase to 1.5°C. The IPCC Special Report for 2018 on the logic and feasibility of the 1.5°C limit[2] warns us that we have only around a decade to limit this global warming.