Saint Joseph Catholic Church

Following a preamble (“The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”), the manifesto has four sections:

• The treaty: A necessary complement to the Paris Agreement
• Principles for a just transition without false solutions
• Financial justice: Debt and reparations
• Call to governments and world leaders

“Time is short, but hope mobilizes us,” the prelates concluded. “A world free of fossil fuels, just and at peace, is possible and necessary.”

The manifesto was also signed by the vice presidents of the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) and the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania (FCBCO).

“He is a man of God; this man moved me,” Pope Francis said in 2016, after meeting the Patriarch during his apostolic journey to Georgia. “The times that I met him, I came away deeply moved, and with the feeling of having found a man of God. Truly, a man of God.”

The ceremony will take place tomorrow, following a papal audience.

In the exchange with the reporter, which took place at a book presentation, the Secretary of State of His Holiness said that the same message should be “addressed to the Israelis,” to “resolve any problems that may exist—or that they believe exist—through the peaceful paths of diplomacy and dialogue.”

In his March 17 homily, delivered at the headquarters of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM) in Bogotá, the prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development also “invited the participants to ask the Lord for three gifts: contemplation to recognize God’s presence in creation, discernment to make decisions guided by the Holy Spirit, and missionary courage to defend life, the peoples, and our Common Home,” according to CEAMA.

Pope Leo XIV also addressed the CEAMA assembly via a video message and called upon participants to proclaim the Gospel and safeguard life.

“It’s the most just war conceivable, because when you say that every loss of human life is a tragedy, that includes the nearly, if not over, 40,000 Iranian lives [that] were massacred by their own regime,” Ambassador Yaron Sideman said in an interview with Elise Ann Allen of Crux.

“If the Iranian regime can do that to its own people, and if you see how casually they’re firing missiles indiscriminately at civilian populations all over the place, all over Middle East, Israel, Europe,” Ambassador Sideman added. “You realize how dangerous this regime is and that at the minimum, it has to be deprived of its ability to cause malice to other countries and individuals.”

The Pontiff made his remarks in a March 18 address to participants in a conference organized by the Council of the European Bishops’ Conferences, the Italian Episcopal Conference, and the World Health Organization.

Pope Leo also called for concern the suffering of others, as taught by Christ in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and said that “urgent attention must also be given to people’s mental health, particularly that of young people, because invisible psychological wounds are no less severe than those that are visible.”

At the conclusion of his March 18 general audience, Pope Leo called upon Christians to be instruments of peace, “so that true peace may prevail among all peoples.”