VATICAN CITY — Efforts to slow climate change and mitigate its impact, particularly on the poor, are being thwarted by selfishness, the Vatican secretary of state told world leaders at the COP29 climate conference. Representing Pope Francis at the conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, Cardinal Pietro Parolin told the leaders that their Nov. 11-22 gathering was taking place at a time of “growing disillusionment with multilateral institutions and dangerous tendencies to build walls.” But, he said, “selfishness — individual, national and of power groups — feeds a climate of mistrust and division that does not respond to the needs of an interdependent world in which we should act and live as members of one family inhabiting the same interconnected global village.” Ignoring or denying the problem will not make the problem go away, the cardinal said. “Indifference is an accomplice to injustice.” The cardinal’s text, released at the Vatican Nov. 13, assured participants of Pope Francis’ “closeness, support and encouragement so that COP29 may succeed in demonstrating that there is an international community ready to look beyond particularisms and to place at the center the good of humanity and our common home, which God has entrusted to our care and responsibility.” Cardinal Parolin insisted that generous funding and international cooperation on climate change are necessary to “create a culture of respect for life and of the dignity of human person.” (CNS)
