Pope and Merkel on climate mission
Angela Merkel has been urged by the Pope to work to preserve the Paris climate deal despite Amer i ca walking away from it.
The German Chancellor also revealed how Francis shared her aim to “bring down wal ls” and not build them – an apparent reference to Donald Trump’s plan to create a hard border with Mexico.
Merkel spoke af ter a meeting at the Vatican.
It focused on the G20 summit in Hamburg next month, and on the need for the international community to combat poverty, hunger, terrorism and climate change.
Merkel said she briefed the Pope on Germany’s G20 agenda, which “assumes that we are a world in which we want to work together multilaterally, a world in which we don’t want to build walls but bring down walls”.
Merkel said Francis encouraged her to fight for international agreements including the 2015 Paris climate accord, which aims to curb emissions.
And, as he did when Trump visited last month, Francis gave Merkel a copy of his env ironmental enc ycl ica l , Pra i se Be, which cast s f ight ing climate change and caring for the environment as an urgent moral obligation.