Praying for the ‘conversion’ of climate-change skeptics?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 10, 2025

As he celebrated the newly released Mass for the Care of Creation yesterday, Pope Leo XIV encouraged prayers “for the conversion of many people, both inside and outside the Church, who still do not recognize the urgency of caring for our common home.”

We all stand in constant need of conversion. But conversion to what? If the Holy Father meant that we should all learn greater respect for the wonders of God’s creation, good Christians can quickly join in the prayers. But if he meant that all men and women should be “converted” to belief in the reality of man-made climate change, his appeal raises serious questions.

Unfortunately there is good reason to believe that Pope Leo was praying for “conversion” of the latter sort. In the same homily he called attention to recent natural disasters and the human suffering they caused, and said that these disasters are “often caused—at least in part—by human excess and our way of life.” That is not a statement of faith but an assertion of fact; it is either accurate or inaccurate.

In the past, natural disasters—floods and tornadoes and mudslides and hurricanes—were classified as “acts of God”—unpredictable occurrences for which no one could be blamed. Now, if they are (“at least in part”) the result of human actions, then someone can be blamed. And the foremost theorists of man-made climate change are ready with a list of suspects.

But before we round up the usual suspects, aren’t we first obliged to demonstrate that a crime has been committed. Many leading scientists are convinced that human activities are contributing to climate change; many others are not. The question is not settled (unless scientific questions can be settled by majority vote). Moreover it is a scientific question, not a matter of faith or morals, not a matter that can be settled by an exercise of the papal magisterium.

Again, Pope Leo has not attempted to make any definitive statement on this issue. But the “climate” of opinion in Rome leans heavily toward belief in the notion that human activity causes changes in the climate. Last week, in response to the devastating floods in Texas, L’Osservatore Romano scolded the Trump administration. While the Vatican newspaper did not go so far as to suggest that Trump policies had actually caused the floods, the front-page article did assert that the White House should already have taken action to prevent such disasters:

Yet, to date, the efforts of the central administration seem to focus less and less on the need to address such crises in a structural and preventive way, as confirmed by the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate or the recent decision not to dedicate even a dollar to climate research in the annual budget of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Are we to believe, then, that if the Trump administration had adhered to the Paris Agreement, or provided more funding for oceanographic research, the floods in Texas might not have occurred? Or at least that other disasters might have been deterred? There is, of course, zero evidence to support such claims.

L’Osservatore Romano reported that “the United States is experiencing a wave of increasingly powerful environmental disasters.” The paper cited the “historical record of 28 extreme climate events” in 2023, followed by another 27 such events in 2024. But the paper does not explain why changes in the world’s overall climate would cause a surge in “extreme climate events” in the United States. Nor, for that matter, does the article define what constitutes an “extreme” climate event. Have there actually been more natural disasters—in the US and worldwide—in recent years? Or are we simply hearing more about them, thanks to the system of instant global communications? (Personally, I have received several email alerts in the past few weeks, warning me of “extreme” weather patterns that included seasonably high temperatures and passing thunderstorms: inconveniences that fell far short of emergencies.)

L’Osservatore Romano concludes that the record of natural disasters “must be remedied by finding the right balance between the climate crisis and the energy crisis, rejecting both simplistic solutions and denialist slogans.” Notice here the bumptious confidence that natural disasters can be remedied, unlike the “acts of God” of the past—the implication that if governments take the appropriate actions, we could be spared from hurricanes and earthquakes.

In the final analysis, what does the Church require of us? That we live in harmony with nature, acting as good stewards of the world’s resources, careful that our actions do not disrupt frail ecosystems. On that we can all agree. Yes, and we can even agree with L’Osservatore Romano on the importance of “rejecting simplistic solutions and denialist slogans.” Conversion might work both ways.