Pope to address oil majors in Vatican climate conference

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican will host executives of the world's top oil companies for a conference next week on climate change and the transition away from fossil fuels, a Vatican source said on Friday.

Pope Francis arrives to lead the Wednesday general audience
 in Saint Peter's square at the Vatican, May 23, 2018. 

Pope Francis, who wrote a major document on protection of the environment from global warming in 2015, is expected to address the group on the last day of the June 8-9 conference.

The conference, organized by the University of Notre Dame in the United States, is expected to be attended by the heads or senior executives of companies including Exxon Mobil, Eni, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Pemex, the source said.

Read story from Reuters by Philip Pullella - “Pope to address oil majors in Vatican climate conference.”

Mayors and governors rush to the Vatican to sign-up to Pope's climate declaration

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ayors and governors from major world cities are convening at the Vatican today and tomorrow in a first-of-its-kind meeting to urge global action on climate change.

The summit is part of Pope Francis’ ongoing campaign to urge global leaders to take meaningful action on climate change at this year’s UN climate talks in Paris.

The leaders will sign today a declaration stating that the Paris summit “may be the last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2 degrees centigrade.”

In one of the opening speeches, California Gov. Jerry Brown “denounced global warming deniers, who he said are ‘bamboozling’ the public and politicians with false information to persuade them that the world isn’t getting warmer,” according to The Blaze.

Gov. Jerry Brown, whose state is in the midst of an epic drought, urged world leaders to stand up in opposition to climate deniers.

Read the EcoWatch story - “Mayors Flock to Vatican to Sign Pope Francis’ Climate Declaration”.

Pope sets the stage and others ponder whether or not they should walk on

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s translated bits of the draft of a major Vatican document on the environment seeped out Wednesday, figures from the Dalai Lama to presidential hopeful Jeb Bush were already debating whether and how to follow the pope’s call for humans to reframe their relationship with “our sister, Mother Earth.’ ”

Politicians, environmental activists and theologians across the spectrum were busy highlighting various aspects of the draft, which was leaked Monday to the anger of the Vatican. The official version of the document, called an encyclical, was to be made public 6 a.m. ET Thursday. The Vatican said that the draft was inaccurate in places.

Some environmentalists were thrilled by the draft’s dramatic framing of climate change as the moral issue of the day, one that reflects a human race blinded by consumerism and individualism, a Northern Hemisphere divorced from its other, needier half.

Read Michelle Boorstein and Chris Mooney’s Washington Post story - “On the eve of its release, Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change is already stirringcontroversy”.