On November 13, in Belém, one of the largest rooms at COP30 hosted a large assembly of Christian organizations, representatives of the Holy See and delegates of the Church from many countries around the world. In the Paranaiba special events room, Cardinals Jaime Spengler (of Brazil), Fridolin Ambongo Besungu (of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Filipe Neri Ferrão (of India) delivered a unified message of moral urgency on the need for decisive climate action.

They presented the Declaration of the Bishops of the Global South, A call for climate justice and the common home: ecological conversion, transformation and resistance to false solutions. To read the full text, click here.

Gustavo Mañez Gomis, of the Presidency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), recognized the intervention of the Catholic leadership as "a necessary reminder that climate policy has a human face", faces that the Church sees every day in its pastoral path with the people of all martyred lands. He also encouraged them to continue offering moral guidance, stressing that technical ambition must be accompanied by ethical and moral guidance.

Cardinal Spengler: “The Earth is a living and expressive organism”

Cardinal Jaime Spengler, O.F.M., Archbishop of Porto Alegre, opened the event with a call that was both poetic and disturbing. "The Earth is a living and expressive organism that deserves respect and care," he said. «Unfortunately, we may have stopped listening to it. We must rediscover our ability to hear the Earth.”

In this historical and existential moment,” he said, “the peoples of Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean—riverside communities, indigenous peoples, people of African descent, farmers, city dwellers, martyrs of the land, past and present—are raising their voices.

The cardinal stressed that they are protagonists of this story and that they want and deserve to be heard. They seek to participate in the dialogue to help build viable solutions to the challenges of climate change, which are increasingly evident, frequent and harmful, especially for the poorest.

The Church in Africa, Latin America and Asia - he announced - is committed to contributing what is its own to help repair the torn social fabric. Pope Francis reminds us that Christian hope is combative, it carries with it the tenacity of those who walk towards a sure goal.

"We will not have peace or true progress unless we restore mutual trust, assume our shared responsibilities, seek justice and show respect and tenderness toward the garden that has been entrusted to us, a garden given to humanity to care for and help it flourish," concluded Spengler.

Solutions in ecology full: Cardinal Ambongo

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then brought to the room the anguish of the African continent. "Our statement is a cry of anguish from the pastors who walk every day with the victims of the climate crisis," he declared.

His voice conveyed the weight of the suffering experienced by the communities it serves: expanding deserts, escalating conflicts, extractive industries that destroy the land and communities.

"Today, Africa is climatically fragile, caught between two deserts - the Sahara to the north and the Kalahari to the south - that are dangerously expanding and disrupting the communities. The devastating situation in the Sahel is a dramatic example. In Central Africa, the Congo Basin jungle is one of the lungs of the planet. Meanwhile, the Amazon is now under serious threat of mass deforestation, fueled by the rush for fossil fuels and critical minerals. These forests play an essential role in global climate balance; its degradation could have irreversible consequences.

He established a clear parallel between the Amazon, venue of COP30, and the Congo basin: both are lungs of the planet and both are seriously threatened. The looting of natural and mineral resources, he recalled, is one of the structural causes of conflicts. The global race for the minerals necessary for the energy transition, such as cobalt and lithium, is at the origin of subregional conflicts with serious humanitarian and environmental repercussions.

One of Ambongo's requests referred to the ecological debt. He rejected technocratic approaches and market-based mechanisms that treat forests and ecosystems as financial instruments, while communities remain impoverished. He also referred to the Jubilee campaign for debt cancellation, describing it not as charity, but as "a matter of justice."

"The Coalition of Churches of the Global South is just a first step. We call for a historic coalition with all religions, civil society actors, indigenous peoples and movements of the Global South and the Global North. The very existence of humanity depends on us working together."

Cardinal Filipe Neri: it is not a diplomatic appeal, but a pastoral one.

Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão began his speech by underlining that the cardinals did not want to launch "a diplomatic appeal, but a pastoral one."

The document they presented was the fruit of collective discernment—in synodal communion—with the Churches of the South. Global, especially in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Millions of people in Asia are already suffering the devastating effects of climate change: typhoons, forced migrations, loss of islands, polluted rivers. Technocratic climate negotiators continue to focus on false solutions, such as “mega infrastructures, “clean” energy projects that do not respect human dignity, and extractive mining under the guise of green batteries.”

“In light of these realities, we demand the urgent launch of the Loss and Damage Fund, together with the adaptation fund focused on developing climate resilience, with guaranteed priority access for affected communities. We call on the richest nations in the world to recognize and assume their social and ecological debt, as historically responsible for resource extraction and greenhouse gas emissions.

With a clear call to end the expansion of fossil fuels and a commitment to clean and decentralized energy, Cardinal Ferrão also promised a concrete commitment on the part of the Church, promoting alternatives such as educational programs, new economic paths based on degrowth and circular economies, ecological spirituality, protection policies, support for women and girls (who are often the most vulnerable in fragile environments) and the strengthening of interfaith networks for the defense of life.

«We do not want COP30 to be just another event, we want it to be a moral turning point. As Pope Leo XIV said, “we inhabit the same planet; "We must take care of it together." That is why I renew my fervent call for unity around integral ecology and peace,” he concluded.

Turning debt into hope

The strong focus on debt and climate finance gave Caritas Internationalis the opportunity to share with the UNFCCC Presidency the “Turning Debt into Hope” campaign, which calls for the cancellation of the unjust debt of developing countries, as part of the broader solutions to address ecological debt and climate justice.

By Susan Dabbous, head of editorial and media at Caritas Internationalis and photos by Marcus Neto, communications coordinator at Cáritas Latin America and the Caribbean