Pope Francis receives Dr. Beling’s book

Dr. Beling’s book on the “The church as an emerging actor in the debate about the future of the planet”, which was co-edited with Belgian-Chilean sociologist Julien Vanhulst in 2019, and features contributions by personalities from academia, church, and politics discussing Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical “Laudato si’: On the Care for our Common Home” (2015) ground-breaking irruption in the field of global social-ecological debates, was delivered into the hands of the Pope in the context of a meeting with rectors from Latin-American universities.

The topic is also currently high up in the Vatican’s agenda, as the Pope has announced the publication of an Apostolic Exhortation forthcoming on October 4th 2023, which builds “Laudato si’. The 2015 encyclical letter has decidedly contributed to both the mainstreaming of sustainability as topic of key relevance to the Christian faith, as well as positioned the church in international debates on the roots and ways out of the social-ecological crisis.