Pope Leo XIV criticized those who question the prevailing narrative on climate change during a recent gathering in Rome.
The pontiff slammed those who “ridicule those who speak of global warming” and affirmed the efforts of his predecessor, Pope Francis, according to The Guardian.
Leo presided over the 10th-anniversary celebration of Francis’s landmark ecological encyclical, Laudato Si (Praised Be), at a global gathering south of Rome. The encyclical cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern and launched a global grassroots movement to advocate for caring for God’s creation and the peoples most harmed by its exploitation.
Leo told the estimated 1,000 representatives from environmental and Indigenous groups that they needed to put pressure on national governments to develop tougher standards to mitigate the damage already done. He said he hoped the upcoming UN climate conference “will listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor”.
The Pope called for climate skeptics to reconsider their positions and argued that Christians should support the climate agenda.
“We cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care for all that is fragile and wounded,” he said, according to The Guardian.
Then, the Pope blessed a block of ice. No really — he literally blessed a block of ice.
NEW: Pope Leo XIV blesses a block of ice before a blue tarp is rolled out and waved by people, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, at the Raising Hope for Climate Justice conference.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 1, 2025
"We will raise hope by demanding that leaders act with courage, not delay."
"Will you join with… pic.twitter.com/PSVVwTB79V
Days earlier, President Donald Trump criticized climate alarmism during his address to the United Nations’ General Assembly. “In 1982, the executive director of the United Nations Environmental Program predicted that by the year 2000, climate change would cause a global catastrophe,” Trump explained. “He said that it will be irreversible as any nuclear holocaust would be. This is what they said at the United Nations. What happened? Here we are. Another UN official stated in 1989 that within a decade, entire nations could be wiped off the map by global warming. Not happening.”
The president noted how scientists called it “global cooling” back in the 1920s and 1930s, but later changed it to “climate change” so that it can apply whether temperatures rise or fall.
“It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” Trump continued. “Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong.”