section_path: Theological emphases and teachings/Environment and climate change
section_name: Environment and climate change
paragraph_text: Environment and climate change
  
  Francis's naming was an early indication of how he shared Francis of Assisi's care for all of creation. This was followed in May 2015 with his major encyclical on the environment, Laudato si' (Praise be to you). In October 2023, in advance of the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Francis issued the apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum (Praise God), in which he called for decisive action to against the climate crisis and condemned climate change denial.
  
  At the 2017 World Food Day ceremony, Francis highlighted the daily impacts of climate change and the solutions provided by scientific knowledge. He pointed out that while the international community had established legal frameworks such as the Paris Agreement, some nations had been withdrawing. He then expressed concern over a renewed indifference to ecosystem balance, the belief in controlling limited resources, and a greed for profit. In 2019, he stated that ecocide was a sin and should be made "a fifth category of crimes against peace".
  
  In May 2024, Francis organized a climate summit that issued a Planetary Protocol for Climate Change Resilience including three pillars: greenhouse gas emissions reduction (while prioritizing nature-based solutions), climate change adaptation, and societal transformation. The next month, Francis issued an apostolic letter titled Fratello sole (Brother sun, referring to Saint Francis' Canticle of the Sun), ordering the Vatican to construct an agrivoltaics facility on its land holdings on the outskirts of Rome, as a gesture of the Church towards the environmental movement.