Pope calls for individual responsibility, conversion to counter Acerra’s environmental degradation
May 23, 2026
In his second and final address this morning in Acerra, a southern Italian city known for its pollution, Pope Leo XIV called for individual responsibility and conversion to counter environmental degradation.
The meeting with area mayors and residents took place in the city’s Piazza Calipari (video). It followed an earlier meeting in the cathedral with clergy, religious, and families of pollution victims.
“The principal meaning of my presence today in Acerra,” the Pope said in his Italian-language address, is “to confirm and encourage that leap of dignity and responsibility that every honest heart feels when life sprouts and is immediately threatened by death.”
“There is always a subtle convenience in resignation, in compromises, in postponing necessary and courageous decisions,” Pope Leo continued. “Fatalism, complaining, blaming others are the breeding ground of illegality and a beginning of desertification of consciences. That is why I would like to say to all of you: let us each assume our responsibilities, let us choose justice, let us serve life! The common good comes before the affairs of a few, of partisan interests, whether small or large.”
After calling for a greater commitment to education—including learning to become better disciples of Jesus—the Pope said that “a real change of economic, civil and even religious mentality” will “build the good that will heal this land and the entire planet.” He explained:
Now we all know that we need to be vigilant about the health of creation ... to reject temptations to power and enrichment linked to practices that pollute the earth, water, air and coexistence. We will realize, step by step, but quickly, a less individualistic economy, a less consumerist system ...
How many poisons have come from a growth model that has bewitched us, leaving us sicker and poorer. So let us learn to be rich differently: more attentive to relationships, more aimed at enhancing the common good, more fond of the area, more grateful in welcoming and integrating those who come to live with us.
“It is from this conversion that good community practices can be built,” the Pope added. “But the way forward is narrow, because it starts with ourselves, from where we are ... In this jubilee year of St. Francis, patron saint of Italy, the Poverello of Assisi reminds us that peace is based on care for the other, on fraternity: we have been placed in a common home to learn to live together.”
Pope Leo’s pastoral visit to Acerra was brief: he was in the city for just over three hours. Following his second address, he returned to Rome by helicopter.
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