The new pope, Leo XIV, has spoken out about urgent need for climate change action

Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just elected as the new leader of the Catholic Church, seems to have similar views on the environment as his predecessor, Pope Francis. Prevost, who is taking the name Pope Leo XIV, has been outspoken about the need for urgent climate action and voiced his support for the use of climate technology such as solar panels and EVs.

Pope Francis, who died in April, made the climate crisis a central issue of his papacy. He urged fossil fuel executives to transition to clean energy, calling the rising greenhouse gas levels “disturbing and a cause for real concern”; he declared a global climate emergency; and he launched a project to power the Vatican with solar panels, among other acts.

Now Pope Leo XIV seems poised to follow in Francis’s environmental footsteps. When Francis spoke, in November 2024, about how climate change would impact the world’s most vulnerable populations, and how it requires global cooperation to address, Cardinal Prevost shared his support for climate action, too. Prevost “stressed it is time to move ‘from words to action,’ ” on the climate, Vatican News reported at the time.

Prevost also warned against the “consequences of unchecked technological development,” while reiterating the church’s commitment to protecting the environment through actions like the Vatican’s solar panels or by shifting to electric vehicles.

In Catholicism, there’s the belief that God has given humans “dominion over nature,” a directive that has been interpreted by some as domination over the planet and its creatures. Pope Francis, however, championed an interpretation that advocated less for exploitation and more for harmony with nature, and the need to care for it. Cardinal Prevost has echoed this idea, saying, per Vatican News, that dominion over nature should not become “tyrannical,” but instead must be a “ ‘relationship of reciprocity’ with the environment.”

Prevost hasn’t been vocal about his positions broadly, so it’s not exactly clear what environmental actions he’ll take during his papacy. But his bio on the College of Cardinals Report, a website run by Catholic journalists, notes that he “is reportedly very close to Francis’s vision regarding the environment, outreach to the poor and migrants, and meeting people where they are.”