Pope Francis meets Arouna Kandé, one of the subjects of the documentary “The Letter.” / Photo credit: Laudato Si’ Movement
Vatican City, Oct 4, 2022 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis is featured in a documentary film on climate change and the environment that premiered at the Vatican on Tuesday.
“The Letter,” which can be streamed for free on YouTube Originals starting Oct. 4, follows a climate activist, an indigenous leader, a climate refugee, and married marine biologists as they travel from their corners of the world to the Vatican to speak to Pope Francis.
The film includes video from the meeting with Pope Francis as well as never-before-seen footage from Francis’ papal inauguration on March 19, 2013.
The inspiration for the documentary’s title was taken from the word “encyclical,” which is used for certain papal messages and literally means “circular letter.” The title refers to Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’.
Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM, preacher of the papal household, also appears in “The Letter” to speak about the Franciscan roots of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment.
The world premiere of the film took place in the Vatican’s New Synod Hall on Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
Oct. 4 also marked the Holy See’s formal accession to the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, presented the film at a press conference on Tuesday. Czerny’s dicastery was a partner of the film together with the Vatican’s communications office.
From left: Cacique Odair “Chief Dadá,” Hoesung Lee, Cardinal Michael Czerny, Lorna Gold, and Nicolas Brown at an Oct. 4, 2022, press conference at the Vatican. Photo credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
“The film ‘The Letter’ highlights the key concept of dialogue,” he said. “Dialogue is central to the Holy Father’s vision for humanity’s peace with the Creator, with all creation, and among us humans.”
Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said at the press conference that the film “is a timely reminder of the urgency and importance of Laudato si’.”
“Both the science community and the faith community are very clear: the planet is in crisis and its life support system [is] in peril. The stakes have never been higher, and we should be the source of the solution to this crisis,” he added.
The film’s writer and director, Nicolas Brown, said the exercise of making the documentary “has been one of getting out of our bubbles and meeting each other across this planet. These voices are important largely because they are the perspectives of those who suffer the most.”
The five main subjects of the film “The Letter” pictured in front of a map in the Vatican. They traveled to Rome to meet Pope Francis. Photo credit: Laudato Si’ Movement
The film’s subjects are Cacique Odair “Chief Dadá,” an indigenous leader of the Novo Lugar community of the Borarí people in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil; Ridhima Pandey, a young climate activist from India; Arouna Kandé, a climate refugee from Senegal; and Robin Martin and Greg Asner, marine biologists who live in Hawaii.
Lorna Gold, president of the Laudato Si’ Movement, is also part of the film.
“The film and the personal stories powerfully show that the ecological crisis has arrived and is happening now,” Cardinal Czerny said. “The time is over for speculation, for skepticism and denial, for irresponsible populism. Apocalyptic floods, mega-droughts, disastrous heatwaves, and catastrophic cyclones and hurricanes have become the new normal in recent years; they continue today; tomorrow, they will get worse.”
The cardinal said: “In his letter Laudato si’, Pope Francis says, ‘I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.’ The film ‘The Letter’ provides a pathway into such [an] encounter and dialogue. This beautiful film — a heartbreaking yet hopeful story — is a clarion cry to people everywhere: wake up, get serious, meet, act together, act now.”
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Pallbearers carry the wooden coffin of Pope Francis, marked with a cross, into St. Peter’s Square for the funeral Mass on April 26, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 26, 2025 / 05:03 am (CNA).
More than 200,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square for the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday as the world said goodbye to the first Latin American pope who led the Catholic Church for the past 12 years.
Under the bright Roman sun and amid crowds extending down the Via della Conciliazione, the funeral Mass unfolded within the great colonnade of St. Peter’s Basilica. Heads of state, religious leaders, and pilgrims from across the globe gathered for the historic farewell.
An aerial view of St. Peter’s Square filled with thousands of mourners, clergy, and dignitaries gathered for Pope Francis’s funeral Mass under clear blue skies in Vatican City on April 26, 2025.`. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, presided over the Mass, delivering a homily that paid tribute to Francis’ missionary vision, human warmth, spontaneity, witness to mercy, and “charisma of welcome and listening.”
“Evangelization was the guiding principle of his pontificate,” Re said.
Pope Francis “often used the image of the Church as a ‘field hospital’ after a battle in which many were wounded; a Church determined to take care of the problems of people and the great anxieties that tear the contemporary world apart; a Church capable of bending down to every person, regardless of their beliefs or condition, and healing their wounds.”
As bells tolled solemnly, the funeral rite began with the intonation of the entrance antiphon: “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.”
The late pope’s closed plain wooden coffin lay in front of the altar throughout the Mass.
A view of the coffin of Pope Francis resting before the altar at the funeral Mass on St. Peter’s Square, April 26, 2025. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
“In this majestic Saint Peter’s Square, where Pope Francis celebrated the Eucharist so many times and presided over great gatherings over the past twelve years, we are gathered with sad hearts in prayer around his mortal remains,” Re said.
“With our prayers, we now entrust the soul of our beloved Pontiff to God, that he may grant him eternal happiness in the bright and glorious gaze of his immense love,” he added.
View of St. Peter’s Basilica during the Funeral Mass of Pope Francis on April 26, 2025. Peter Gagnon / EWTN
Among the more than 50 heads of state present were U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, alongside former President Joe Biden. Also in attendance were Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Argentine President Javier Milei, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva joined the throng of international dignitaries along with representatives of religious traditions from around the world.
Royal families also paid their respects, with Prince William representing King Charles III and Spanish King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia seated near the altar.
Pilgrims arrived before sunrise to claim their spots in St. Peter’s Square for the Mass with the first in line camping out the night before.
The funeral followed the Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis, the official liturgical order for papal funerals, which was updated at Pope Francis’ own request in 2024. Scripture readings included Acts 10:34-43, Philippians 3:20–4:1, Psalm 22, and the Gospel of John 21:15-19 — a passage in which the risen Christ tells Peter: “Feed my sheep.”
More than 200 cardinals and 750 bishops and priests concelebrated the funeral Mass. More than 4,000 journalists representing 1,800 media outlets reported on the event. All told, the Holy See said more than 250,000 mourners attended.
In his homily, Cardinal Re reflected on key moments in Pope Francis’ pontificate from his risk-defying trip to Iraq to visit Christians communities persecuted by the Islamic State to his Mass on the border between Mexico and the United States during his journey to Mexico.
“Faced with the raging wars of recent years, with their inhuman horrors and countless deaths and destruction, Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions,” the cardinal said, causing the crowd to erupt in spontaneous applause.
Pope Francis’ coffin lies in St. Peter’s Square during the papal funeral Mass on Saturday, April 26, 2025. Credit: EWTN News
“Pope Francis always placed the Gospel of mercy at the center, repeatedly emphasizing that God never tires of forgiving us. He forgives, whatever the situation might be of the person who asks for forgiveness and returns to the right path,” Re reflected. “Mercy and the joy of the Gospel are two key words for Pope Francis.”
The cardinal presided over the final commendation and farewell for Pope Francis, praying: “Dear brothers and sisters, let us commend to God’s tender mercy the soul of Pope Francis, bishop of the Catholic Church, who confirmed his brothers and sisters in the faith of the resurrection.”
“Let us pray to God our Father through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit; may he deliver him from death, welcome him to eternal peace and raise up him on the last day,” he said.
After the crowd chanted the Litany of Saints in Latin, Cardinal Baldassare Reina, vicar general of the Diocese of Rome, offered a final prayer: “O God, faithful rewarder of souls, grant that your departed servant and our bishop, Pope Francis, whom you made successor of Peter and shepherd of your Church, may happily enjoy forever in your presence in heaven the mysteries of your grace and compassion, which he faithfully ministered on earth.”
A poignant moment followed as Eastern Catholic patriarchs, major archbishops, and metropolitans from the “sui iuris” Churches approached the coffin while a choir chanted a Greek prayer from the Byzantine Funeral Office.
Re blessed the coffin with holy water and incense as the choir sang in Latin: “I know that my Redeemer lives: on the last day I shall rise again.”
At the end of the Mass, the traditional antiphon “In Paradisum” was sung in Latin, asking for the angels to guide the pope’s soul to heaven.
“May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs come and welcome you and take you to the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem. May choirs of angels welcome you and with Lazarus, who is poor no longer, may you have eternal rest.”
In keeping with his wishes, Pope Francis will not be buried in the Vatican grottoes alongside his predecessors. Instead, his body will be taken in procession through the streets of Rome in a vehicle to the Basilica of St. Mary Major, a church he visited over 100 times in his lifetime to pray before an icon of the Virgin Mary, “Salus Populi Romani,” particularly before and after his papal journeys.
Pope Francis’ wooden coffin is transported on the popemobile through the streets of Rome as crowds of faithful line the procession route from St. Peter’s Basilica to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, April 26, 2025. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
In Rome’s most important Marian basilica, Pope Francis will be laid to rest in a simple tomb marked with a single word: Franciscus.
Remembering Pope Francis
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on Dec. 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and entered the Society of Jesus at age 21. Following his ordination in 1969, he served as a Jesuit provincial, seminary rector, and professor before St. John Paul II appointed him auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992. He became archbishop of the Argentine capital in 1998 and was created cardinal in 2001.
The surprise election of Cardinal Bergoglio on March 13, 2013, at age 76 marked several historic firsts: He became the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, and the first to choose the name Francis, inspired by St. Francis of Assisi’s devotion to poverty, peace, and creation.
His 12-year pontificate was characterized by a focus on mercy, care for creation, and attention to what he called the “peripheries” of both the Church and society. He made 47 apostolic journeys outside Italy, though he never visited his native Argentina.
During his tenure, Pope Francis canonized 942 saints — more than any other pope in history — including his predecessors John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II. He published four encyclicals and seven apostolic exhortations while promulgating 75 motu proprio documents.
Throughout his papacy, Francis significantly reshaped the College of Cardinals through 10 consistories, creating 163 new cardinals. His appointments reflected his vision of a global Church, elevating prelates from the peripheries and creating cardinals in places that had never before had one, including Mongolia and South Sudan.
Health challenges marked the pope’s final years. He underwent surgery in July 2021 and in June 2023. In November 2023, he suffered from pulmonary inflammation, and in February 2025, he was hospitalized at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for bronchitis and a respiratory infection.
His papacy faced unprecedented challenges, including the global COVID-19 pandemic, during which he offered historic moments of prayer for humanity, notably the extraordinary urbi et orbi blessing in an empty St. Peter’s Square in March 2020. He also repeatedly called for peace amid conflicts in Ukraine and the Holy Land.
Francis convoked four synods, including the Synod on Synodality, whose second session concluded in October 2024. He implemented significant reforms of the Roman Curia and took several steps to address the clergy abuse crisis, including the 2019 motu proprio Vos Estis Lux Mundi.
Pope Francis’ funeral marks the first day in the Catholic Church’s traditional nine-day mourning period that will include nine days of requiem Masses to be offered for the repose of his soul.
“Pope Francis used to conclude his speeches and meetings by saying, ‘Do not forget to pray for me,’ Re recalled at the end of his homily.
“Dear Pope Francis, we now ask you to pray for us. May you bless the Church, bless Rome, and bless the whole world from heaven as you did last Sunday from the balcony of this Basilica in a final embrace with all the people of God, but also embrace humanity that seeks the truth with a sincere heart and holds high the torch of hope.”
Vatican City, Sep 21, 2019 / 03:08 pm (CNA).- A member of the International Theological Commission has announced that she is no longer available to participate in the “binding synodal path” undertaken by the bishops’ conference of Ger… […]
The near- and long-term responsibility of the Catholic Church is to express moral responsibility for spaceship earth—our “universal home”—and all of its parts, without buying-in, politically, to the New World Order. Laudato Si addresses Solidarity, but while there is a nod toward the inseparable Subsidiarity (e.g., n. 196), it also seems too perfunctory to this reader.
The devil is in the details. Within the clarity of authentic moral theology, something for Catholic academia to figure out, to the extent that we still have a Catholic academia…
Probably a good idea, at least, to retain some kind of distinction between the “human ecology” and the interactive “natural ecology”, as in Centesimus Annus (St. John Paul II), but now less so in Laudato Si’s useful but conflated and easily abused “integral ecology.” In the recent UN resolution, for example, where demographic abortion/”health care” now is branded as a human right.
So much ongoing nonsense and faux science regarding climate change, recently highlighted by Joe Biden stupidly claiming that Hurricane Ian demonstrates the alarmist worries about mankind playing a significant role in global warming, climate change, and so on can no longer be seriously denied.
Exceedingly wrong and ignorant once again, Joe. Such claims pushed by people like Biden, Pope Francis, and way too many fellow travelers remain totally absurd when seriously examined based on objective science and relevant data. To be sure, objective climate science completely obliterates the claims of the environmentalist yahoos who use their faux science in part to malevolently attack capitalism as a primary culprit in bringing about what doesn’t even exist – the phantom known as “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming,” or “you selfish, destructive capitalists and your means of production are destroying the planet!”
For anyone interested in learning some of the basics why the climate alarmist claims are pure balderdash, I have two recommendations:
The first one is easy to access, and it contains graphs and charts with data that show why the claims of the yahoos have no legitimate scientific support whatsoever. See climatologist Roy Spencer’s:
The second one is a bit more difficult to access for free, though it does appear on Newsmax from time-to-time. It is the insightful documentary “Climate Hustle 2,” and it’s website is https://www.climatehustle2.com/ wherein various forms of viewing the documentary can be purchased.
To be good stewards of the environment, we are called upon to support our environmental-related actions based on objective science and prudence. We should never do so based on hype and pseudo or bogus science that frequently causes harm in many ways whenever it is gullibly and/or unthinkingly followed.
Planet Earth is thirsting for tender care.
The near- and long-term responsibility of the Catholic Church is to express moral responsibility for spaceship earth—our “universal home”—and all of its parts, without buying-in, politically, to the New World Order. Laudato Si addresses Solidarity, but while there is a nod toward the inseparable Subsidiarity (e.g., n. 196), it also seems too perfunctory to this reader.
The devil is in the details. Within the clarity of authentic moral theology, something for Catholic academia to figure out, to the extent that we still have a Catholic academia…
Probably a good idea, at least, to retain some kind of distinction between the “human ecology” and the interactive “natural ecology”, as in Centesimus Annus (St. John Paul II), but now less so in Laudato Si’s useful but conflated and easily abused “integral ecology.” In the recent UN resolution, for example, where demographic abortion/”health care” now is branded as a human right.
So much ongoing nonsense and faux science regarding climate change, recently highlighted by Joe Biden stupidly claiming that Hurricane Ian demonstrates the alarmist worries about mankind playing a significant role in global warming, climate change, and so on can no longer be seriously denied.
Exceedingly wrong and ignorant once again, Joe. Such claims pushed by people like Biden, Pope Francis, and way too many fellow travelers remain totally absurd when seriously examined based on objective science and relevant data. To be sure, objective climate science completely obliterates the claims of the environmentalist yahoos who use their faux science in part to malevolently attack capitalism as a primary culprit in bringing about what doesn’t even exist – the phantom known as “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming,” or “you selfish, destructive capitalists and your means of production are destroying the planet!”
For anyone interested in learning some of the basics why the climate alarmist claims are pure balderdash, I have two recommendations:
The first one is easy to access, and it contains graphs and charts with data that show why the claims of the yahoos have no legitimate scientific support whatsoever. See climatologist Roy Spencer’s:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/09/after-hurricane-ian-no-trend-in-florida-landfalls-global-activity-trending-down/
The second one is a bit more difficult to access for free, though it does appear on Newsmax from time-to-time. It is the insightful documentary “Climate Hustle 2,” and it’s website is https://www.climatehustle2.com/ wherein various forms of viewing the documentary can be purchased.
To be good stewards of the environment, we are called upon to support our environmental-related actions based on objective science and prudence. We should never do so based on hype and pseudo or bogus science that frequently causes harm in many ways whenever it is gullibly and/or unthinkingly followed.