The news has hit.
But take heart, we will continue forth.
We are saddened and disappointed to hear that President Trump has announced the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
However, Pope Francis has said: “We must continue to be aware that, regarding climate change, there are differentiated responsibilities. As the United States bishops have said, greater attention must be given to “the needs of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable, in a debate often dominated by more powerful interests”. We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family. There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalization of indifference.” (Laudato Si paragraph 52)
Further, Saint Pope John Paul II said during his 1990 World Day of Peace message: “I wish to repeat that the ecological crisis is a moral issue. (…) At the conclusion of this Message, I should like to address directly my brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church, in order to remind them of their serious obligation to care for all of creation.”
Therefore, as Catholics and people of good will, we are called to do our part to be good stewards what God has given us, and to not give up. Things may get tougher, things may get harder, but we are a sturdy people, and we will continue moving forward in the direction that our popes have called us to.
Take heart.
“May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope.” Laudato Si, 244