BY Bridget Orr | December 4 | 
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Catholics march on climate change
Catholic organisations joined protests in more than 150 countries, involving hundreds of thousands of people, this weekend on the eve of a UN conference on greenhouse gas emissions as Pope Francis said the world is headed toward ‘suicide’ if no climate agreement is reached
The COP21 conference is taking place from November 30 to December 11 in the Parisian suburb of Le Bourget despite the terror attacks in Paris a fortnight ago.
Over last weekend, interfaith leaders gathered in Saint-Denis to hand over a petition of over 1.8 million signatures calling for action on climate change and the Pope spoke of global warming as he returned from Africa.
Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes represented the Pan-Amazonian Church
Network and echoed his fellow bishops’ call for a ‘fair, binding and truly transformational climate agreement.’ “We ask wealthier countries to aid the world’s poorest to cope with climate change impacts, by providing robust climate finance,” he added.
A march expected to take place in Paris on Sunday was cancelled as a result of the terror attacks but marked instead with a display of shoes at Place de la Republique featuring donations from people who expected to attend the march.
The shoes displayed included signed pairs from Pope Francis himself and Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and a small shoe tied around a lamp post saying ‘Please secure my future.’
Even though the Paris march could not take place, Catholics joined the worldwide protest.
Filipino Catholics marched along Manila led by Sacred Heart Missionaries seminarian and environmental activist Reynon Ajero who held up colorful signs saying: “Resist the plunder of our environment” and referring to the Laudato Si’ proclamations.
“I want make the people know that we are suffering for what is our mistake to our mother earth,” Ajero said. “So whatever we do to ourselves, we do to the mother earth, it will return to us.”
During the Melbourne protest on November 27, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, former president of Caritas Internationalis, told over 40,000 that: “We were given a garden. We may not deliver back a desert.”
In Britain and Ireland, there were satellite marches through London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Belfast, Cardiff and many other cities and towns on Sunday, many backed by SCIAF and its Caritas Internationalis counterpart in England and Wales, CAFOD.
—This story ran in full in the December 4 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.
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