Pope calls for Dialogue and Mutual Empowerment

In his historic address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Pope Francis called America “a land of dreams”, which he said can lead the world in a shift to deep, inclusive politics and economics that brings people together, eliminates harm, and guarantees dignity and reciprocity.

Pope Francis has come to the United States with a very clear and universal message: there are injustices no free and conscientious people can accept and against which all people of good will should work together. Challenges like climate change, immigration and income inequality are not ideological issues, partisan issues or issues of opinion or preference; they are deep moral issues. And we must do our best to work in solidarity, to oppose these unnecessary injustices.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Joseph is Executive Director of Citizens' Climate International. He represents Citizens’ Climate in the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, the UNFCCC negotiations, and other UN processes. He is the lead strategist supporting the Acceleration Dialogues (diplomatic climate-solutions roundtables) and Resilience Intel—an effort to move the world to 100% climate-smart finance. He is Senior Advisor Sustainable Finance for the EAT Foundation, where he served as Interim Director for the Food System Economics Commission, during its start-up phase from April through November 2020, and now serves on the Secretariat of the Good Food Finance Network. He is founder of Geoversiv and a lead contributor to the Earth Intelligence podcast. He publishes a free newsletter at LivingFutures.net

Spiritual Reform to Heal the Planet

2013 has been, in many ways, the year of Pope Francis. The Vatican head of state and spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics around the world, Francis has time and again made clear that his papacy will be marked by openness, transformation, healing and by a renewed and explicit commitment to the foundational ethical principles of the Christian tradition: openness, compassion and selfless service.

At the outset, we asked in these pages whether Pope Francis would be a reformer, a democratizing leader, a revolutionary, or an enforcer of the old guard. There were indications that he would do things differently, and seek to emulate the philosophy and the ministry of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose name he chose—the first pope ever to do so.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

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