The Climate Question · BBC World Service

Will the new Pope be a climate campaigner?

·26 min·2 clips

Pope Francis called Earth 'an immense pile of filth' in his 2015 encyclical that urged swift climate action.

White smoke sets the scene. The episode opens with a new pope: crowds watching the Sistine Chapel chimney, St. Peter's bells ringing, and Pope Leo stepping into the role. The mood is curious rather than ceremonial. The real question is climate, Catholic teaching, and whether Francis' work on global warming will continue under his successor. Laudato Si' does much of the work here. Adil Najam says the encyclical mattered because people who would not normally read papal writing read this one, including people studying and advocating for climate change. That reach is the point. He describes its influence outside Catholicism too, with Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and interfaith conversations giving the subject more room. Christiana Zenner agrees. She says it was unusual for a papal teaching to speak so broadly and to be read so widely, and notes that many religious organizations and intellectuals formally responded to it. The conversation stays with that religious and climate meaning. Pope Francis is the reference point, the leader whose climate work opened space across traditions. Pope Leo is the unknown. The episode does not pretend to know where Pope Leo will go. It asks whether he will continue that work, and what kind of successor would be worthy of the role Francis shaped. The guests are reflective, not breathless. Their shared point is that climate concern can travel through moral authority, not only through activism. By the end, the question is less about one man's first words and more about whether the Catholic Church keeps climate near the front of its public conscience.

As heard by us

A papal succession story becomes a serious test of climate faith and influence.

White smoke over the Sistine Chapel becomes a story about power, continuity, and whether Pope Leo will carry Francis's climate emphasis forward. The episode treats the Vatican succession as more than ceremony; it asks how far one pope's climate teaching can actually reach.

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Why you'd press play

You want Vatican drama with a serious climate question running through it.

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