At 10-year mark, Pope Francis seen as a global leader on the environment
By Brian Roewe
National Catholic Reporter
March 9, 2023
Six months before Pope Francis issued his landmark encyclical on creation, he found himself on the front lines of climate change, in the crosshairs of a storm heading toward Tacloban City in the Philippines.
Two years earlier, in November 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest-recorded typhoon to make landfall, had decimated the central Philippine city on the island of Leyte. Into that aftermath, in January 2015, stepped the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, donning a translucent yellow poncho over his white papal vestments, standing at an outdoor altar as yet another major storm bore down on the beleaguered city.