In a speech at the meeting ‘Faith and Science: Towards COP26’, promoted by the Holy See and the embassies of the United Kingdom and Italy in the Vatican, the Supreme Pontiff pointed out that the meeting, scheduled for November 1 to 12, will thus be able to offer concrete hope to future generations.

The Pope also noted that recognizing that the world is interconnected means not only understanding the harmful consequences of our actions, but also identifying behaviors and solutions, and urged us to ‘commit ourselves to a future shaped by interdependence and co-responsibility’.

The Pope pointed out that this is one of the great contributions ‘that our creeds and spiritual traditions offer to facilitate this change of direction that we need so much’ and added that ‘love is the mirror of a spiritual life lived intensely’.

This challenge in favor of a culture of care for our common home and also for ourselves has the flavor of hope, because there is no doubt that humanity had never had as many means to achieve this goal as it has today, he said.

Binding these ideas with the ‘vocation of respect,’ the Pope stressed that this concept means ‘respect for creation, respect for our neighbor, respect for ourselves and respect for the Creator’ and also ‘reciprocal respect between faith and science.

In this regard, he recalled what he expressed in his encyclical ‘Laudato Si’ on the need to ‘enter into dialogue between them, oriented to the care of nature, to the defense of the poor, to the construction of networks of respect and fraternity.

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