Is the Pope Green?

If the past is any predictor, we should be braced for some outrageous headlines about Pope Benedict XVI in the coming days. His arrival in the US this week has already prompted wide-ranging speculation about what he might say and what impact his presence might have on US elections.

The best corrective to this is to listen to what the Pope says and—especially with such an accomplished theologian at the helm—to read the texts of his speeches, all of which are freely available on the Vatican website.

We can be quite sure about a few things. The Pope will not endorse any presidential candidate or any political party. He will do what he always does: call people to a deep and joyful encounter with the person of Jesus Christ; encourage respect for reason and truth without which authentic freedom is impossible; and address key moral and social issues of our time. His message will have political ramifications but it will not be intentionally partisan.

No doubt the media and the political classes will try to spin his words for their own purposes. But Pope Benedict and Catholic teaching do not fit neatly into journalistic categories. Although his language is wonderfully jargon-free, his nuanced points require concentration and reflection, traits not widely practiced in this age of ever-briefer news cycles.

For this reason, it is tempting to portray the Church leaning “left” on some socio-economic issues and “right” on matters concerning marriage and the family. In fact, many religious commentators and even Church bureaucrats do this all the time and we will surely hear it again this week.

One of the areas where Catholic social teaching is considered to lean left is the environment. With Earth Day approaching, some in the media may well revert to their established pattern of calling Benedict the “Green Pope.”

This pattern was evident when the Reuters News Agency described Benedict wearing green vestments to signify his support for the environment. Yes, he did wear green, but so did every other priest in the world that day—as it happens to be the vestment color for the ordinary liturgical season. Throw in the event organizers’ handing out some recyclable water bottles, and the papal mass at the Marian shrine of Loreto was soon reduced by the press to an “eco-rally”.

Last month journalists incorrectly reported on so-called "new deadly sins", including pollution. (The Daily Telegraph’s "Recycle or Go to Hell, Warns Vatican" was the most egregious headline of all.) The Vatican never declared any new sins; instead the interviewed bishop merely pointed out that sins have social consequences that become more widespread in a globalized society. But international news was made.

Sometimes the slightest “eco-friendly” moves affecting Vatican City are attributed to papal enthusiasm for the environment. The proposal to place solar energy panels on the rooftop of a single Vatican building and the acceptance by the Vatican of a gift of a “carbon offset” caused by some trees in Hungary are two of these.

While the Vatican does indeed care for the environment, few seem to have noticed that the Holy See is the only state in the world that has not signed a single environmental treaty, presumably due to serious concerns over environmentalist ideology not to mention the heavy reporting requirements such treaties inevitably load on small states. Considering the time and energy devoted to the Kyoto Protocol, this would seem to be a conspicuous stain on the Vatican’s environmental bona fides.