Photo via Flickr/Papist
Photo via Flickr/Papist

Religion and science have always been strange bedfellows. Just ask Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Pope Francis is now taking on climate change, according to the Guardian: “In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world’s main religions.”

Why the sudden shift toward this global issue? The Vatican reports that the pope wants to “directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions.”

Additionally, the pope will “publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology. Urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds.”

Pope Francis has often taken on issues that were once deemed outside the Catholic Church’s responsibilities or seen as “unorthodox,” but he finds global economic disparity and its ecological toll on humankind much too big an issue to ignore any longer.

There are doubts about how much effect it will have: Many Catholics don’t listen to the Church when it comes to scientific matters anyway (uh, evolution?), but having one more major world player in this fight certainly can’t hurt. You go, Cool Pope. You go.

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