When Pope Francis’s first encyclical on the environment was released ten years ago this summer, it made headlines beyond Catholic media. The 184-page document, a call to caring for the environment as a religious and moral duty, was published just before the 2015 Paris Agreement treaty on climate change, Laudato Sí, or “Praise be to you” in Latin, did what papal encyclicals rarely do: reached beyond the church hierarchy to unite and inspire scientists, clergy, activists, politicians, and laypeople in the fight to combat climate change on behalf of those suffering the most—the poor.
The New York Times called Laudato Sí “unexpectedly authoritative and confident”; Austen Ivereigh, a papal biographer, called it “the most significant Catholic social encyclical” in more than a century; Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana predicted, “Laudato Sí can and must have an impact on urgent decisions to be made in this area.”
And in the ten years since … crickets.
At Laudato Sí’s tenth birthday, its impact in the United States has been almost negligible. Very few priests discuss Laudato Sí from the pulpit. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), a national assembly of Catholic clergy, has officially discussed Laudato Sí only twice in a decade. A 2021 study of more than twelve thousand columns written over five years by U.S. bishops—the primary audience for any papal encyclical—found just 93 (0.8 percent) mention climate change or its equivalent at all. “Our findings indicate individual U.S. Catholic bishops’ diocesan communications have collectively snuffed out the spark of Laudato Sí,” that study’s authors conclude. And of the 195 dioceses in the U.S., only thirty-six have enrolled in the Laudato Sí Action Platform, a Vatican-affiliated organization that assists U.S. Catholic institutions reduce their environmental impact. “Am I happy with that?” said John Mundell, an Indianapolis-based environmental engineer who served three years as LSAP’s global director. “No, I am not happy with that level of engagement.” Stephanie Clary, environmental editor at National Catholic Reporter, said. “At the national level, I think everyone would agree that Laudato Sí has not been a priority of the bishops.”
Why are U.S. Catholics, whose 53 million adherents account for about one seventh of the total number of Americans and whose finances are among the strongest in the Catholic world, so far behind on Laudato Sí? Will ignoring the encyclical alienate young Catholics, who repeatedly list climate issues as among their chief concerns? How might newly-elected Pope Leo XIV—an American—affect the adoption of Laudato Sí’s principles among his Catholic countrymen?
Some Catholics jumped right into Laudato Sí. The Archdiocese of Atlanta consulted with climate scientists at the University of Georgia before the encyclical was published. By 2020, the archdiocese had an action plan in place for its 1.3 million Catholics that included everything from installing solar panels on school buildings to replacing polystyrene cups at post–Sunday Mass coffee hours. Many dioceses and parishes have borrowed and built on Atlanta’s early plans. That includes the Diocese of San Diego, which last year became the first—and remains the only—U.S. Catholic diocese to divest itself of its financial holdings in fossil fuels. Christina Slentz, San Diego’s associate director of “creation care,” said about 70 percent of its ninety-seven parishes have solar panels, and the diocese’s headquarters relies almost entirely on renewably-sourced electricity.
NCR recently published a list of ten dioceses working to reduce their climate footprint. The Archdiocese of Chicago converted its schools to renewable energy; the Archdiocese of Washington D.C is working to improve the region’s tree canopy; in Newark, the archdiocese is working with sustainable architecture students to decrease its energy consumption; and the Diocese of Lexington, which includes Appalachian coal country, has committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
What’s the secret sauce at these dioceses? Part supportive archbishop, part passionate crew, and “partly the Holy Spirit,” said Kat Doyle, who oversees Atlanta’s plan. Initially, Atlanta’s creation care funds came from a single, private donor. But Doyle thought the archdiocese needed “some skin in the game,” she said. The archbishop ponied up $100,000 a year from his annual fundraising appeal, an amount still in place. Today, the Archdiocese of Atlanta has a multi-year plan to reduce its carbon footprint and its energy and water consumption by 25 percent, and its landfill waste by up to 50 percent. “I don’t think it has anything to do with where we are,” she said. “I think it has to do with we won’t take no for an answer and when we do get a no we say, ‘How can we do it anyway?’”
Will ignoring the encyclical alienate young Catholics, who repeatedly list climate issues as among their chief concerns?
Pope Francis, who died in April, was unhappy with Laudato Sí’s reception. In 2023, he issued Laudato Deum, a rebuke to the world for its lack of progress on climate change. “If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China,” Francis wrote, “. . . we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact . . . . For when human beings claim to take God’s place, they become their own worst enemies.” In Laudato Deum, “you see the pope is not screwing around,” said San Diego’s Slentz. “He starts with the United States and he ends with the United States. He is talking to us.”
Why haven’t U.S. Catholics done more? Dan DiLeo, an expert on Catholic social teaching and one of the authors of the 2021 study of the bishops’ columns, believes the answer boils down to the same one-word answer at the core of just about everything in the U.S. right now: politics. “The [Catholic] hierarchy has become more politically conservative over the last two decades,” DiLeo said. “If you map that onto the finding that partisan identity is the biggest indicator of climate position, it is not surprising that a politically conservative leadership is less open to receiving and responding to Francis’s teaching on climate change. The way I summarize it is ‘party trumps faith,’ and I think that includes some bishops.”
So more conservative priests are less likely to preach about climate issues, and those sympathetic to Laudato Sí may keep quiet for fear of offending their parishioners. “We get a lot of op-ed submissions along the lines of ‘I asked my pastor to preach more about the climate and he won’t do it because he is afraid of pushback,’ said NCR’s Clary. Mundell, who recently stepped down as global director of LSAP, agrees. “I have found that a lot of clergy are hesitant to speak out too much about this,” he said. “That’s the reality we are in, and it is a difficult one when you are trying to keep your flock together and have them see this as a moral issue and not a political issue.”
An overwhelming majority of American young people—85 percent— say they are at least moderately worried about the impact of environmental change. At the same time, more young people are abandoning traditional religions, with Catholics experiencing a significant downturn, according to some studies. Is the church missing an opportunity to engage its youth by not investing more heavily in living out Laudato Sí? Mundell said he has seen an uptick in young Catholic returning to churches that are assessing their energy needs through Laudato Sí’s lens of sustainability. “They are trying to live their lives according to Laudato Sí, and they want their churches to be a part of that,” he said.
Atlanta’s Kat Doyle puts it like this: “We talk about the dignity of the person, but what about the dignity of the Earth? If young people see the faith that they are professing, the faith that fulfills them and allows them to thrive, the faith that encompasses their spiritual health, can also encompass the health of our common home, it makes that faith both easier to join and harder to walk away from.
The election of Pope Leo XIV has given Catholic environmentalists reason to hope. They point to the X account he kept when he was still Cardinal Robert Prevost, which has included links to Laudato Sí–aligned projects and organizations, and retweets urging President Trump to read Laudato Sí. “I think there are some really promising inroads there about Laudato Sí,” said NCR’s Clary. “I think we might see more from him along the lines of consumerism and artificial intelligence. It’s not what you think of when you think about the environment, but it is very much what Laudato Sí critiques.” Mundell is hopeful, too. Ten years after Laudato Sí, there are now support networks like LSAP and others with actionable plans for parishes, dioceses and individual Catholics. “Signing on is the first step,” Mundell said. “It’s a process.”