Why Gulf Coast Catholics aren't looking to the pope on climate change

When Pope Francis thinks of climate change, he thinks of social justice. In his 2013 inaugural homily as pope, Francis implored “all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political, and social life” to “be ‘protectors’ of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.” Speaking at an Italian university a year later, Francis announced, “This is our sin, exploiting the Earth and not allowing her to give us what she has within her.” In 2015, Vatican-watchers expect Francis to produce an encyclical that situates climate change within the framework of Catholic social teaching.

Francis’s position on the injustices of climate change is not new to the Roman Catholic Church. His predecessors, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, issued similar pleas for societies around the world to act as responsible stewards of creation. In the 2001 report “Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence and the Common Good,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops made an obvious observation: “Much of the debate on global climate change seems polarized and partisan.” In a 2013 letter to President Barack Obama, a bishop endorsed by the USCCB identified “the human impact upon the planet’s climate” as “a fundamental moral priority.”

Journalists, scholars, and activists love to quote the pope and his bishops, especially when their words legitimize scientific positions on climate change. But as someone who studies religion in coastal Louisiana—one of the United States’ most Catholic enclaves and endangered environments—I can’t recall a single encounter with a person who referenced the Catholic tradition of environmental justice. And you’re unlikely to hear the three most prominent Catholic politicians in the state—Governor Bobby Jindal and Senators David Vitter and Mary Landrieu—talk about it in those terms.