The encyclical of Pope Francis on climate change and many related themes, long surrounded by controversy and leaked to the press on the eve of publication, was formally released by the Vatican on 18 June 2015. The final version, hardly changed from the one seen earlier, places much emphasis on human responsibility both for climate disruption and for wider ecological damage.
Laudato Si (“be praised”), On the Care of Our Common Home, is in the tradition of a small number of noted encyclicals dealing with issues far beyond the internal evolution of church thinking. In its desire to highlight (as one report says) "the threat that a warming planet, rising sea levels and more extreme storms pose to his community’s poorest and most vulnerable”, it is widely seen as a progressive document from a pope who, in his previous life as an Argentine cardinal, was considered a conservative on most issues.
There are two earlier examples of unusually forthright encyclicals. The first was Rerum Novarum (“of revolutionary change”), Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour, which came from Pope Leo XIII in May 1891. It was prompted by the degraded state of working people in many industrialising countries, and largely concerned with economic issues. The document was progressive only in parts, and supported the right to private property; but in noting the duties of employers and the rights of labour to organise, it became known as the “workers’ charter”. Such points may seem mild now but in their day provoked not a little anger among ruling elites.
