Pope Francis’s encyclical, subtitled Care for our Common Home, has created a global news event. The question now is whether it will become a historic news event, by galvanising real action to avert catastrophic climate change.

There’s a chance it will, for two reasons. First, the moral force the pope brings to bear may kindle that most fragile necessity: political will. Second, his declaration of the atmosphere as a common good, owned by all for all, may help settle the enduring argument about which nations have the responsibility to act. The rich owe the poor, he says.

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That is the positive case. There are numerous argument as to why the pope’s carefully timed intervention may in the end prove to be little more than a passing distraction. Of the biggest polluters – China, US, India, Russia, Japan – only the US has significant Catholic population and that is riven by partisan division. On the other hand, some south American nations have been obstructive in the global climate negotiations and may be swayed by the pope.

Some may think the pope’s moral authority is overstated, given the Catholic church’s differences with much of the modern world on contraception and homosexuality and the corrosive child abuse cover-ups. Yet Pope Francis is more often seen in a positive light than a negative one.

Only time will reveal the true impact of the encyclical on the greatest long-term challenge facing civilisation. But if the moral argument it presents moves the problem from one that “should” be tackled sometime to one that “must” be tackled now, it will have performed a remarkable act.

Perhaps one might even call it a miracle.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2015/jun/18/will-pope-franciss-encyclical-become-his-miracle-that-saved-the-planet