The Interdisciplinary Observatory on Climate Change is releasing the latest text in the Commentaries from the OIMC series, dedicated to short, open-ended essays produced by our team. In this edition, sociologist Renan William dos Santos pens the essay Francis’ environmental legacy and the expectations of Leo XIV, an analysis of the papal succession with a focus on the relationship between Catholicism and the environmental agenda and on the role of the Catholic Church in advancing the climate agenda.

Read an extract from this issue:

Among the various strategies that the Catholic Church has adopted in recent years to reverse its crisis of legitimacy, few have proved as opportune as investing in the environmental agenda. With the encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015), Francis not only placed the ecological crisis at the centre of ecclesial discourse – something unprecedented – but also invested in a style in tune with the desires of young people, social movements and global activists. It was largely an effort to turn the Church into the moral beacon of a new ecological humanism, capable of offering spiritual guidance in the midst of climate collapse and civilisational disorder.

PhD in Sociology from the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP), in post-doctoral studies at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP-UERJ), Renan William dos Santos is a collaborating researcher at the OIMC and member of the steering committee of the “Religion and Ecology” section of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). His thesis Religious Orientations on Ecological Conduct, supervised by Reginaldo Prandi (FFLCH-USP), was awarded the 13th USP Outstanding Thesis Prize, as the best thesis in the Human Sciences Major Field, as well as receiving an Honourable Mention in the CAPES Thesis Prize.