How a controversial letter from Pope Francis shaped climate politics and the Biden 2020 campaign
“We have a good one now,” Vice President Joe Biden laughed as he read aloud a leaked draft of Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical on climate change.
It was June 2015, and Biden was addressing a White House-sponsored forum on clean energy investment, his first public appearance since his son Beau’s death from cancer in May. The vice president was in good spirits. Just the day before, numerous media outlets had obtained an early copy of Pope Francis’s book-length letter on the environment. For Biden, the contents were encouraging: Francis framed climate change similarly to the way the Obama administration did — as both a moral and economic issue.
Before quoting the encyclical at length, and becoming the first Obama official to comment on it, Biden declared that the concerns of the pope fit nicely with the president’s push for more businesses to adopt clean energy alternatives. He warned that when even the pope weighs in on the issue with such urgency, it’s a clear sign that humans are approaching the “point of no return” in preventing climate change’s negative effects.
“There’s a consensus growing,” Biden said. “This doesn’t only have a moral component to it. It has a security component to it, as well as an economic component.”
Within days, the Vatican published the full version of the encyclical, titled Laudato si’. The encyclical, written five years ago this week, decries “throwaway culture” and calls modern society “one of the most irresponsible in history.” It concludes that global mistreatment of the earth is a symptom of the same destructive urge that leads people to sideline the poor, the elderly, and the unborn.
Since its publication, Laudato si’ has become a lightning rod in American public discourse on the environment: the extra-political document to which politicians appeal when framing climate change as a moral crisis.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was one of the first to realize the potential of Laudato si’. Upon its publication, the self-described nonreligious senator hailed Francis as a “miracle” and Laudato si’ as a “powerful message” that should “change the debate around the world.”
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Republican politicians weren’t so enthusiastic. The 2016 presidential campaign season was just starting up, and the media frenzy over Francis’s encyclical made Laudato si’ one of the first litmus tests (on an issue already uncomfortable for many Republicans) in the crowded primary field. Many of the Catholic candidates, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, distanced themselves from the pope.
Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, both a Catholic and a fierce critic of climate change legislation, said that the pope “should leave science to the scientists.” Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Catholic convert, echoed Santorum, saying that he didn’t rely on the pope for his political positions.
“Religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting into the political realm,” Bush said.
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When Francis arrived in the city on Sept. 23, climate activists swarmed the halls of congressional office buildings. Many handed out copies of Laudato si’, along with pamphlets backing Maryland then-Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s Healthy Climate and Family Security Act, which sought to establish a system of capping carbon emissions.
Francis delivered a speech to Congress that day and exhorted it to heed his message in Laudato si’.
“I am convinced that we can make a difference, and I have no doubt that the United States, and this Congress, have an important role to play,” he said. “Now is the time for courageous actions and strategies, aimed at implementing a culture of care and an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.”
The pope was met with applause — but not unanimous. In anticipation of a paean to the environment, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, himself a Catholic, said he would boycott Francis’s speech.
“I don’t need to be lectured by the pope about climate change,” Gosar told CNN.
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The election of Donald Trump put a damper on the late Obama-era euphoria over climate action. But by then, Laudato si’ had become stamped in the public consciousness. When Trump visited the Vatican in 2017, Francis gave him a copy of the encyclical as a gift. It was widely interpreted as “a message” to Trump, who has not included climate change as one of his administration’s top priorities.
The document also became a rallying cry for many Christian environmentalists, who protested the Trump administration’s climate positions at the 2017 People’s Climate March.
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Biden, though, is the one who made Laudato si’ a consistent part of his campaign. The former vice president has it listed as the document that drives him to support policies that will help people “serve as stewards of our creation and protect our planet against climate change.” Some of his goals include reducing carbon emissions to zero by 2050, cleaning up pollution in low-income communities, and creating jobs within the clean energy sector.
Biden argued, in an op-ed published in the Religion News Service, that as president, he would answer Francis’s call by caring for the “imperiled planet” with environmentally conscious policies.
“My faith teaches me that we should be a nation that not only accepts the truth of the climate crisis but leads the world in addressing it,” Biden wrote. “Pope Francis is right in Laudato si’: ‘Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last 200 years.’”
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