In January 2018, on a sweltering day, Pope Francis addressed a crowd of 100,000 faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, which is situated near an Amazon rainforest area roughly the size of Colorado that had been devastated by gold mining. He stated, “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present.” The Pope also condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the native peoples.”

Pope Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism driving the destruction of the Amazon and supported the idea that Indigenous peoples’ guardianship of their territories should be respected. He urged everyone to defend isolated tribes, saying, “Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture.”

Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an Indigenous leader who attended the event, welcomed the Pope’s words, which came from the head of the Catholic Church – an institution with a long history of violence against Indigenous peoples worldwide. Palacios said, “Few world leaders have spoken about our issues, and the Pope publicly stated that the rights of Indigenous peoples were historically violated. Let us hope that the new Pope will continue implementing the position the previous Pope has been talking about.”

During his 12 years as pontiff, Pope Francis revolutionized the Catholic Church’s approach to protecting the planet. He acknowledged the Church’s role in colonization and considered climate change a moral issue born of consumption and materialism. Experts see the selection of Robert Francis Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV, as a sign that the faith-based climate justice movement will continue. This comes as the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples worldwide, with far-right politics on the rise globally.

In 2015, Pope Francis released his historic papal letter, or encyclical, titled “Laudato si’.” The document identified planet-heating pollution as a pressing global issue disproportionately affecting the world’s poor and condemned wealthy countries like the U.S. for their significant contribution to the climate crisis. With this, Francis connected faith, climate change, and social justice, making it a tenet of Catholic doctrine.

Christopher Cox, executive director of the Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment, said, “Pope Francis regularly stated that we have a throwaway society, where we throw away people and nature, and that we need a culture based on care – care for people, especially the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized, and care for creation.” Cox emphasized that we have been given a beautiful Earth, but we are consuming it at a rate that will not sustain life in the long term.

As the first Latin American pope, Francis implicitly embraced elements of liberation theology, a Catholic social justice movement calling for the liberation of marginalized peoples from oppression. Although he was occasionally critical of the doctrine’s Marxist elements, his statements on poor and Indigenous peoples reflected the doctrine’s central values.

Eben Levey, an assistant professor of history at Alfred University, noted that from the beginning of his papacy, Francis recognized Indigenous ways of being Catholic and Indigenous language in Catholicism. This marked the most expansive official recognition of Indigenous contributions to Catholicism to date. In the centuries since the arrival of conquistadores in the Americas, many Indigenous communities have made Catholicism their own, and church leaders have increasingly accepted that there are multiple ways of being Catholic and that Catholicism and Indigenous cultures can coexist.

In 2015, Francis approved the use of two Mayan languages, Tzotzil and Tzeltal, in mass and sacraments. The following year, he celebrated mass in Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Chol during a visit to Mexico. In 2022, he officially apologized to Canada for the residential schools that took Indigenous children from their families, leading to many deaths in unmarked graves. The next year, he rejected the Doctrine of Discovery, a concept used to justify the seizure of land from Indigenous peoples.

Pope Francis stated, “The Doctrine of Discovery is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church.” He expressed strong support for the global implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and connected those rights to climate action. In 2023, he emphasized that Indigenous peoples are critical to fighting climate change, saying, “Ignoring the original communities in the safeguarding of the Earth is a serious mistake, not to say a great injustice.”

Although Pope Francis made significant progress, his progressivism had its limits. In 2019, he called for a meeting of church leaders to address issues affecting the Amazon Basin. However, he refused to embrace proposals to make church leadership more inclusive of women and married men. His climate activism was also constrained, as he transformed how religious institutions viewed the climate crisis but did not implement direct institutional action.

Nadia Ahmad, a Barry University School of Law associate professor, noted that while Francis publicly supported renewable energy adoption and fossil fuel disinvestment, he did not mandate a “radical energy transition” across dioceses, schools, and hospitals. This limitation likely stemmed from contradictory politics within the church, with many traditional, conservative Catholics resisting Francis’ progressive teachings.

Pope Leo XIV has been lauded for his advocacy in defense of immigrants and worker rights. However, his track record on engaging directly with climate change is sparse. Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, sees the new pope’s comments on moving “from words to action” as a promising sign that he will continue Francis’ commitment to communicating the urgency of a warming world.

The timing of the conclave’s decision to select the first pontiff from the United States, amid the Trump administration’s dismissal of climate action and attacks on Indigenous rights, is not lost on Tucker. She said, “It may be a signal to say ‘America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future where we collectively have been working to create a future worthy of our children and our children’s children.'”

Pope Leo XIV grew up in Chicago and is a citizen of both the U.S. and Peru, where he spent decades serving as a missionary and bishop. He speaks five languages fluently and some Quechua, an Indigenous Incan language. While working in Peru in the 1990s, Leo was critical of the government’s human rights abuses, which could provide insight into the stances he might take as pope.

In 2016, the would-be pontiff spoke at a conference in Brazil, praising Francis’ encyclical and describing it as “very important” and “something new in terms of this explicit expression of the church’s concern for all of creation.” This suggests that Pope Leo XIV has an awareness of the issues affecting Indigenous peoples, such as environmental degradation.

Both Francis and Leo’s shared experiences working with marginalized communities harmed by colonialism and climate change, and their commitment to the social justice aspects of the church’s mission, are particularly meaningful in this political moment. The selection of Pope Leo XIV comes as the world faces a resurgence of ultra-right-wing politics, and the Catholic Church is one of the few multilateral organizations capable of responding to the questions of our modern age.

The Catholic Church, next to the United Nations, is one of the few institutions that can respond to the challenges of our time. Pope Leo XIV’s commitment to the social justice aspects of the church’s mission and his shared experiences with Francis are crucial in this moment, as the world grapples with the climate crisis and the rise of far-right politics.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/international/pope-leo-climate-catholic-indigenous-francis/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.