Online:
Visits:
Stories:

By Truthdig
Contributor profile | More stories

Story Views
Now:
Last Hour:
Last 24 Hours:
Total:

U.S. Catholics Ready to Execute Pope’s ‘Marching Orders’ on Climate Change (Video)

Friday, June 19, 2015 7:59

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

(Before It's News)

Archbishop of Louisville, Ky. Joseph Kurtz, president, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, right, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, brief the news media on “Laudato Si”, Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, in Washington, June 18. (AP/Cliff Owen)

Leaders of the Catholic Church in America described Pope Francis’ encyclical as a “marching order” impelling them to pressure Congress and the White House to take swift and decisive action to prevent catastrophic climate change.

The Guardian reports:

The high-level meetings offered a first glimpse of a vast and highly organised effort by the leadership of America’s nearly 80 million Catholics to turn the pope’s moral call for action into reality.

“It is our marching orders for advocacy,” Joseph Kurtz, the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Archbishop of Louisville, said. “It really brings about a new urgency for us.”

Representatives of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said they would hold two briefings for members of Congress on Thursday and visit the White House on Friday to promote and explain the pope’s environmental message.

Those efforts will get a new injection of urgency, when the pope delivers a much-anticipated address to Congress during his visit to the US in September, church leaders said.

Leaders of other religions got involved in the push. More than 300 rabbis signed a letter calling on Jewish institutions and people to divest from “carbon Pharaohs” or coal-based electric power, and invest their money in renewable electricity instead.

Comments

Newsletter

Email this story