The Pope can lead the fight against climate change

Rosamund Urwin litre can now be more expensive than gasoline.

Ye s t e r d a y, I visited a housing occupation called the Imirim settlement with Cafod and its local partner, Apoio. Some 1,500 residents there, who face the additional threat of eviction, will turn on the tap from 4pm until 4am and find nothing comes out. The lack of water also presents sanitation issues, including a heightened risk of dengue fever.

Residents considered this humble series of shacks as a refuge. Paulo Roberto de Carvalho, a baker and fatherof-four, moved there because he couldn’t afford both to pay rent and to feed and clothe this family.

Livanice Lopes da Silva has to care for three disabled children on the most modest benefits. But everywhere was evidence of faith: Livanice spoke about being “chosen by God”; on Paulo’s wall was a picture of the last supper.

These are the people for whom the

While the rich can buy their way out of the drought, in the poorest areas the water supply is cut off each day

Pope is speaking up. He will be lambasted in some camps for what is a political intervention. The encyclical is seeking to influence November’s United Nations climate change meeting in Paris, which a i ms to c reate a le gally binding agreement on emissions.

The Pope is up against business interest too. As a Peruvian archbishop put it: “It will have many critics, because they want to continue setting rules of the game in which money takes first place.” And if not the Pope, who?

As leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, he could do for climate change what he’s done for Cuba, venturing somewhere others were afraid to go. The people of Imirim — and the poor all over the world — need him.