VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- While "creation is crying out" and millions of people suffer the effects of climate change and pollution, politicians are failing to act, Pope Leo XIV said.

As the U.N. Climate Conference, COP30, began its final week of meetings Nov. 17, the pope sent a video message to Christian representatives and activists from the global south who were holding a side event to the conference in Belem, Brazil.

The Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 at COP21 "has driven real progress and remains our strongest tool for protecting people and the planet," Pope Leo said in the video.

"But we must be honest: it is not the agreement that is failing, we are failing in our response," he said. "What is failing is the political will of some." 

While Pope Leo did not specify which nations were at fault, the U.S. government was not represented at COP30 because U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the Paris Agreement.

"True leadership means service, and support at a scale that will truly make a difference," the pope said. "Stronger climate actions will create stronger and fairer economic systems. Strong climate actions and policies -- both are an investment in a more just and stable world."

"Creation is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat," Pope Leo said.

"One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes," he added. "To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity."

As government representatives from most of the world's countries -- more than 190 nations registered delegations -- struggled to finalize agreements on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing reliance on fossil fuels, Pope Leo told the Christian activists he believed "there is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius, but the window is closing."

"As stewards of God's creation, we are called to act swiftly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift he entrusted to us," the pope said.

In safeguarding creation as a gift of God, he said, "we walk alongside scientists, leaders and pastors of every nation and creed."

"We are guardians of creation, not rivals for its spoils," the pope said. "Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and behind climate cooperation."

Despite the challenges, Pope Leo told the activists, "you chose hope and action over despair, building a global community that works together."

The efforts have made a difference, he said, "but not enough. Hope and determination must be renewed, not only in words and aspirations, but also in concrete actions."
 

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, Virgin (Feast day - November 18) Born in Grenoble, France, in 1769, Rose joined the Society of the Sacred Heart. In 1818, when she was forty-nine years old, Rose was sent to the United States. She founded a boarding school for daughters of pioneers near St. Louis and opened the first free school west of the Missouri. At the age of seventy-one, she began a school for Indians, who soon came to call her "the woman who is always praying". Her biographers have ...

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- At a time when young people spend so much time in "digital environments," members of the Catholic Biblical Federation need to ask how they are fulfilling the Second Vatican Council's mandate to give everyone access to the Bible, Pope Leo XIV said.

"What does 'easy access to Sacred Scripture' mean in our time? How can we facilitate this encounter for those who have never heard the Word of God or whose cultures remain untouched by the Gospel?" the pope asked members of the federation's steering committee and its regional representatives.

Pope Leo welcomed the group to the Apostolic Palace Nov. 17, expressing particular concern for people who "find themselves in cultural spaces where the Gospel is unfamiliar or distorted by particular interests."

At the end of the audience, Mary Sperry, associate director of the U.S. bishops' Office for the Biblical Apostolate, presented Pope Leo with two large white binders. They contained a preview copy of The Catholic American Bible, slated for publication in 2027. 

Meeting on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, "Dei Verbum," Pope Leo asked members of the group to reflect on how they individually and as a federation respond to the call "to hear the Word of God with reverence and to proclaim it with faith."

"The church draws life not from herself but from the Gospel," he said. "From the Gospel she continually rediscovers the direction for her journey, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who teaches all things and reminds us of everything the Son has said."

A key part of that, he said, is helping everyone have access to a Bible so they can "encounter the God who speaks, shares his love and draws us into the fullness of life."

Translations of the Bible, which the federation promotes, are essential for that, he said, but so are initiatives like encouraging "lectio divina," a prayerful reading of Scripture.

"Ultimately," Pope Leo told federation members, "your mission is to become 'living letters … written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God,' bearing witness to the primacy of God's Word over the many voices that fill our world."
 

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