In one of the strongest declarations on climate change to date from the Catholic Church, the bishops of the Philippines have called for the local church to decline any donations with ties to the fossil fuel and extractive industries as part of a full-scale effort to disconnect church finances from the production of coal, oil and gas.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines delivered the directive, along with calling for church institutions to press their banks to phase out fossil fuel holdings, in a pastoral statement issued Jan. 28, the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Titled “A Call for Unity and Action amid a Climate Emergency and Planetary Crisis,” the statement also outlines a plan for a national program to implement Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home” — including participation in the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform — and places church support behind a legislative proposal to recognize the legal rights of nature.
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