Luisa Neubauer, the climate activist, is always a force to be reckoned with, but to see her here, of all places, behind the Vatican walls, is somewhat surprising. Pope Francis published his new environmental warning “Laudate Deum” on Wednesday at 12 noon, which is the usual time for news in the Vatican, and a day later the Vatican invited people to a press conference. The title of the event in the idyllic gardens of the Papal States is “Laudate Deum – Voices and Testimonies on the Climate Crisis”, and it will feature personalities who have long been committed to sustainability and climate protection.
Among them is the Italian Giorgio Parisi, 75, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021 for his work in understanding complex systems. The founder of the international “Slow Food” movement, Carlo Petrini, 74, is also involved. And the only German-speaking participant: Luisa Neubauer from Hamburg, who became widely known with “Fridays for Future”.
“The future belongs to these young people,” says the Pope
The Pope received the group on Thursday morning before returning to the World Synod, which meets for four weeks over in the Great Audience Hall. He has publicly expressed his respect for the young protest movement several times, and the 86-year-old now says to 27-year-old Neubauer: “The future belongs to these young people.”
The Pope doesn’t really have it that way with the Germans; they are too contemporary, too demanding, too opinionated for him. The former German Vatican ambassador and Angela Merkel friend Annette Schavan just spoke about this in an interview with Time reminds: “I don’t know who alienated whom in Rome. But now the situation is messed up.” Neither the Germans nor the Europeans are at the center of Francis’ thinking. “He doesn’t fly to Berlin, Paris, Madrid, but to the periphery.” The relationship between German Catholics and the Pope is considered strained, at least since the Germans set up their Synodal Way renewal process.
For decades, the Germans in the Vatican have not had as little to say as they do today. At the World Synod, for the first time, German is no longer one of the conference languages, which provides plenty of material for discussion these days. The invitation to Luisa Neubauer was by no means sent through German channels; the Vatican deliberately did so directly. Neubauer, the self-professed Protestant, immediately agreed. On the one hand, it is an emotional journey for her because it reminds her of her last visit to Rome many years ago with her father, who died shortly afterwards.
Neubauer says she is actually more optimistic than the Pope
On the other hand, she is here to find allies. Of course, she also notices that the topic of climate protection is no longer as popular among the population as it was a few years ago, and that the fronts are hardening worldwide: “The governments are not taking action against those who destroy the environment, but against us activists who we want to save them.” And: “We need the church to get involved.”
The Holy Father’s commitment right now is incredibly important, that’s what everyone here on the podium says, and that it comes across as so personal: The Pope is clearly suffering from the fact that the situation in the world has deteriorated further since his environmental encyclical in 2015. Over the past eight years it has become clear to him “that we are not reacting sufficiently while the world around us is crumbling,” he wrote.
Neubauer also sees the problems, what else, but then she says a remarkable sentence: she is actually more optimistic than the Pope. He expresses strong criticism of multilateralism and international diplomacy; he sees old structures everywhere that are no longer useful if you have to save the world. Neubauer, on the other hand, is still full of enthusiasm and is already fully focused on the UN climate conference COP 28 in Dubai in December and is confident that climate activists can help make the conference a success.