Francis was the first climate pope. Who will take up his mantle?

The Washington Post · last updated April 22, 2025 – 6:29 AM

VATICAN CITY — For 12 years, Pope Francis devoted himself like no other pontiff to what he called “an existential” threat “for our human family.”

He started by writing a 184-page encyclical — a formal teaching document — about climate change and the moral duty to care for the planet. Then he kept going: hosting environmental summits, meeting with climate activists and stressing to policymakers how every fractional degree of temperature rise creates new cataclysms.

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