J Agric Environ Ethics (2016) 29:931–943

DOI 10.1007/s10806-016-9639-2

ARTICLES

Laudato sı̀ and the New Paradigm of Catholic

Environmental Ethics: Reflections on Environmentalist
Movements in Italy

Lorenzo Orioli1

Accepted: 19 September 2016 / Published online: 28 September 2016

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract This article explores certain aspects related to the environmental ethical
message in the Encyclical Letter Laudato si, written in 2015 by Pope Francis, leader
of the Catholic Church, and compares them to recent Green party political move-
ments in Italy. Italy offers a unique case study in that the religious background of
the country acts as an independent variable with respect to the social acceptance of
current environmental issues. The ethical message in Laudato sı̀ is compared to
recent debates on the moral responsibility of the individual and/or institution
towards environmental problems; a range of responsibilities assumed by institutions
versus individuals with regards to environmental problems are analyzed. In con-
clusion, parallels are made between the abovementioned ethical debate and the
ethical contents of the Encyclical Letter.

Keywords Laudato sı̀
Italian Green movements
Catholic environmental ethics

Ethics of responsibility

Introduction

The Encyclical Letter Laudato sı̀ by Holy Father Francis was presented to the world
in June 2015 in Rome at an internationally strategic point in time. It reached the
public prior to both the UN Sustainable Development Summit (New York,
September 2015) and the UN-COP 21 (Paris, December 2015), and while the
Universal Exposition (Milan, May–October 2015) was taking place. It was a period
when the possible risk of failure of the international agreement on Climate Change
was a concern of the Catholic Church and its diplomats, who made it a goal to
stimulate worldwide awareness and address the dramatic environmental challenges

& Lorenzo Orioli

lorenzo.orioli@unifi.it
1
School of Agriculture/DISPAA Department, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

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on earth. In April 2016 in New York, on the celebration of World Earth Day, 171
countries ratified the Climate Paris Agreement (CPA), surpassing the established
threshold of 55 countries representing 55 % of the total GHG emissions worldwide.
Although these conditions were necessary for the Climate Paris Agreement (CPA)
to go into effect, it does not mean that the climate crisis will be solved in the near
future. In fact, a calculation based on the single Intended Nationally Determined
Contributions (INDC) for all countries participating in the COP21 reveals that target
emissions will be reached only in several years, in 2030, at which time the
temperature will already have increased by 2.7 C, more than the maximum
threshold, which was fixed at 2 C (Bompan et al. 2016).
The Encyclical Letter Laudato sı̀ was presented in this global context of climate
policy, after both much diplomatic bargaining in Kyoto at the Protocol ratification
of 2005 and the failure of COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009. Its worldwide message
had to address the gap that has developed between government decisions about
environmental policies and the livelihood of local people living in developing
countries. Even the Climate Paris Agreement (CAP) mentions the importance of
local societies and traditional forms of knowledge in its articles: ‘‘with the purpose
of maintaining up-to-date knowledge on the success and challenges in building
capacity effectively in a particular area’’ (art. 75.) Thus, a focus on climate change
and a new confidence for civilized society are part of the dual approach of Laudato
sı̀ towards global issues. Even before being a religious organization, the Catholic
Church is considered a universal moral institution, one that is potentially able to
influence the environmental ethical choices of millions of people around the world,
and independently of their personal religious beliefs. Usually, when we discuss
topics related to the religious sphere, there is the tendency to assume an apologetic
position in defense of religion. Today, it is generally accepted that the political
importance of religion is on the rise and that religious debates may also revolve
around environmental issues. The literature surrounding the topic of ‘‘religion and
environment’’ is too broad to be discussed here. Nonetheless, it can be said that all
different religions—including other forms of Christianity as well as Muslim, Jewish,
Buddhist, and Hindu representatives—expressed their concern about climate change
on the occasion of the Paris Conference (Livingstone 2016). In this sense, religions
exercise an incomparable ‘‘power of convocation’’ over people; their role in
educating individuals on ecological issues is seen as both strategic and useful from
the perspective of international environmental policy makers (Larivera 2015).
The message of the Catholics’ main political institution on the contemporary
environmental crisis aspires to be universal: it wants to reach every living person
living on our planet. It is impossible, therefore, to leave them out of the debate on
environmental ethics. Their approach leans towards the principle of responsibility,
which was mentioned in the Climate Paris Agreement (CAP) as a ‘‘principle of
equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in
the light of different national circumstances’’ (CAP 2015). For this reason, the
question posed by Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist in the Journal of Agricultural and
Environmental Ethics (Nihlén 2009) as to whether it is the individual or institution’s
moral responsibility to deal with environmental problems can be interpreted here in
light of both the Encyclical Letter and the Climate Paris Agreement (CAP). Recent

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criticism of the Encyclical Letter concerns its implicit theory according to which
‘‘the cultural change, if widespread, more or less automatically gets translated into
the necessary collective action for institutional change’’ (Wright 2015). Wright says
of the Encyclical Letter that it is ‘‘implausible to rely primarily on moral conversion
to solve our environmental and social ills,’’ and provides a clear illustration of the
debate between individual and collective (institutional) responsibility as regards
environmental issues.
The driving question behind this article is based on the assumption that for
‘‘cultural transformation to raise awareness of the ethical issues in our relationship
to nature and society’’ (Wright 2015), we are obliged to pass through individual
moral choices, which can only then create ‘‘political vehicles for translating new
ways of thinking into effective action’’ (Wright 2015). How can this assumption be
demonstrated? We believe it can be done without speculation and on the basis of a
comparison between the recent history of the Catholic Church and the Green
movements in Italy. The choice to refer to Italy as a case study stems from the fact
that the Author of this article has a direct knowledge of the social context of Italy,
and because Catholicism still prevails in this country. The social theory behind the
Encyclical Letter presupposes that its universal message must be culturally adapted
to each nation and to each person, and thus adapted to specific national histories.
Although the level of acceptance and understanding of the contents of the
Encyclical Letter depend on the social and cultural substrata of each nation, a deep
awareness about environmental issues depends on individual moral choices, which
may be partially influenced by individual religious convictions.
The main aim of this article is thus to compare the ecological message of Laudato
sı̀ to certain aspects of the environmentalist/Green movement and culture in Italy,
and to find links between Catholic ethics, specifically concerning the relationship
between Man and the Environment, and laical thought matured in the nonreligious
and political milieu of Italian society. This comparison will help shed light on the
debate between collective and individual moral choices surrounding environmental
issues and underscore the role that the message of the Encyclical letter plays in this
debate.
The first two sections of the article are dedicated to a brief description of the
recent history of both the Catholic Church and environmental movements in Italy.
The third section is dedicated to framing the ethical message in the Encyclical Letter
and its importance for making moral decisions regarding environmental problems.
The final section is a conclusion.

The Encyclical Letter and the Recent History of the Catholic Church

To best understand the importance of Laudato sı̀ it is necessary to refer to the recent
history of the Catholic Church from the twentieth century to our day. The goal here
is not to praise the Institution but to assume a non-superficial point of view. In the
history of the Catholic Church, this Encyclical represents an absolute novelty. For
the first time ever, an official document of the Catholic Church is exclusively
dedicated to social and environmental issues: ‘‘Today, however, we have to realize

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that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate
questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the
earth and the cry of the poor’’ (Pope Francis 2015). Accepting the Pope’s words
means recognizing the cultural gap in the Catholic Church with respect to socio-
environmental awareness. Far too late, only at the end of nineteenth century (1891),
did the Magisterium of the Catholic Church begin to recognize the so-called ‘‘social
question’’ as being linked to the Industrial Revolution in Europe; the same goes for
the current ‘‘environmental question.’’ The Church was late in recognizing that
ecological issues are an important subject, and one that needs to be addressed in
order to solve social injustice in any part of the world. Until now, the Catholic world
has looked at ecological issues with suspicion, mainly because they are linked to
neo-Malthusian theories. Acceptance of ecological issues has been a long and
convoluted process.
What follows is a short summary of the main institutional texts that characterize
the introduction of environmental themes into the Magisterium of Catholics Church.
Prior to Pope Francis, other Heads of the Roman Church dealt with environ-
mental issues. It is worth mentioning the Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens
written by Pope Paul VI (1963–1978) in 1971, where, in the chapter dedicated to
New Social Problems, the Holy Father included a paragraph entitled ‘‘The Natural
Environment.’’ He highlighted how in this era (which was not yet named
Anthropocene), man is made abruptly aware of the destruction of nature, its
exploitation, and the emergence of new diseases due to pollution.
Saint Jean Paul II (1978–2005) was the first Pontifex that dealt with the
consequences of industrial growth, massive urbanization, and the growing global
reliance on energy (La Civiltà Cattolica 2015). In the Encyclical Letter Sollecitudo
Rei Socialis (1987), Pope John Paul II alerted the people of the world to the risks
linked to overexploitation of non-renewable resources, which were previously
considered inexhaustible. The document was released on the occasion of the World
Day of Peace in January 1990 and was titled Peace with God the Creator, Peace
with all of Creation. Here, the ideas of global warming and climate change were
discussed even before being commonly used in everyday life (La Civiltà Cattolica
2015). In the following Encyclical Letter Centesimus annus, in 1991, Jean Paul II
laid out the roots of the ecological question that can be summarized as follows: at
the base of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an
anthropological error because Man thinks that he can use the Earth in an arbitrary
manner, subjecting it without restraint to his will (Pope John Paul II 1991). In 1997,
he posited that humanity today can succeed in combining new scientific skills with a
strong ethical dimension, that people can promote the environment as both a home
and resource for man and for all men, and that society can eliminate the causes of
pollution and guarantee adequate conditions of hygiene and health for both small
groups and vast human settlements. Pope John Paul II understood that the aspect of
conquering and exploiting resources had become a dominant issue: Man had
reached the point of threatening the hospitable aspect of the environment by seeing
the environment as a ‘‘resource’’ and thus jeopardizing our understanding of it as
‘‘home.’’ Because of the transformative power of technology, the balance between
man and environment came to a critical point (Pope John Paul II 1997).

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Pope Benedict XVI (2005–2013), on the occasion of two World Days of Peace in
2007 and then in 2010, reaffirmed the tragic link between the ecology of nature and
the social ecology of the poorest people living in underdeveloped countries. He
referred expressly to the problems associated with such realities as climate change,
desertification, the deterioration and loss of productivity in vast agricultural areas,
the pollution of rivers and aquifers, the loss of biodiversity, the increase of natural
catastrophes, and the deforestation of equatorial and tropical regions (Pope Benedict
XVI 2010). In the Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (2009), he stated that the
subject of development is closely related to our relationship to the natural
environment, and that the way humanity treats the environment influences the way it
treats itself, and vice versa (Pope Benedict XVI 2010).
In short, it is only in the second half of the twentieth century that environmental
issues start to be mentioned in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church; civil society
in Italy was, to some degree, much more attentive to these issues and developed a
dialogue about them earlier.

The Italian Environmental Movement: A Brief History

Two major changes took place during the Reign of Italy (1861–1946) that sparked
an interest in environmental problems: the first was the founding of naturalist and
conservationist associations and the second was the development of ecology as an
academic discipline within the universities. In 1871, in Turin, thanks to interest
expressed by famous warlord Giuseppe Garibaldi, a zoological society named
Società Zoofila Piemontese was born. The Ente Nazionale per la Protezione degli
Animali, the most important organization protecting fauna, grew out of the Società
Zoofila Piemontese in 1938. Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, other
organizations came into being, including the Societè de la flore Valdôtaine, which in
1948 gave rise to the Movimento Italiano per la Protezione della Natura. These
organizations were founded by groups of botanists and zoologists. In general, during
the second half of nineteenth century, environmental awareness in Italy blossomed
around small groups of enthusiastic intellectuals who enjoyed naturalistic excur-
sions and sportsmen who were engaged in preserving the natural splendors of Italy.
In 1863, the Club Alpino Italiano was founded (Meyer 1995) and its mission today
remains the divulgation of both the value and role of the forest as cultural heritage
and place for alpine activity. In 1894, the Touring Club Italiano was established:
initially it was an association of 57 cyclists who wanted to spread the pleasure of
touristic travels. By 1937, its members numbered 477,000. In 1898, a national
association for the protection of Nature, the Associazione Nazionale Pro-Montybus
et Sylvis, the precursor of many other nature organizations in Italy, came into being
(Meyer 1995). In the late nineteenth century, the principal factor that forced groups
of intellectuals to found different associations aimed at protecting Nature was the
growth of heavy industry (particularly steel, mining and extractive industries),
which caused the first environmental disasters. The organizations were a reaction to
the early destruction of natural and artistic beauties, but lacked a global and
coherent vision of the environmental issue as a whole.

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The autarchic policy of the Fascist regime contributed to the exploitation of

natural resources such as forests and mines but, at the same time, it led to the birth
of new national parks such as Gran Paradiso (1922), Abruzzo (1923), Circeo (1934),
and Stelvio (1935). The ideology of Fascism in Italy, like Nazism in Germany,
praised ruralism. This is why some people say that Ecology has a Fascist
characteristic, and consequently, eco-fascist associations were formed in Italy when
the postwar democratic regime made the new Fascist movement acceptable (Nebbia
2007). During the years 1945–1980, and particularly during the years 1946–1947,
the economic liberal regime ignored the leftist political party’s take on environ-
mental issues (Meyer 1995), and criticisms coming from members of Communist
Party called the main conservationist groups bourgeois. In 1955, intellectuals,
writers, art historians, archeologists, journalists and aristocrats in Italy created
another important organization: Italia Nostra. Thanks to it, the demolition of part of
the ancient center of Rome and the cementing of the countryside near Italy’s capital
were avoided. Italia Nostra is still active and engaged in defending the Italian
landscape (both urban and rural) and its monuments from urban sprawl, transport
infrastructure and the diffusion of industrial sites. Its principal mission is to protect
the cultural and environmental heritage through divulgation and advocacy activities.
If the years 1923–1940 were defined as a golden age of theoretical ecology, the
years 1968–1973 were the Spring of ecology (Nebbia 2002, 2007). This is in part
thanks to books by authors such as Barry Commoner, Paul Ehrlich, Barbara Ward,
Rachel Carson and the Meadows, and their popularity in Italy (Nebbia 2002). At the
beginning of the 1970s a new social phenomenon came into being: ‘‘ecological
protests,’’ as they were coined by Nebbia (2007), which brought together individuals
and groups against construction companies or coercions that damaged both human
health and natural resources. Although these protests originated in the lower levels
of society, they were backed by scientists and created a melting pot of ecological
protesters, pacifists, anti-military groups, and non-violent social movements
(Nebbia 2007). A strong movement for educating people about the main ecological
issues—industrial pollution, radioactivity, dioxins, etc.—took place in the
1970–1985 period. This led to both a growth in awareness and the proliferation
of many small groups at local levels, which fanned the flames of the ecological
struggle. In this ideological jumble, some spontaneous groups structured themselves
in hierarchically organized larger organizations and directed their focus at political
representation in the Italian Parliament. This led, in 1980, to the growth of a large
environmentalist organization named Legambiente. Today this party is well-rooted
in the Democratic Party (left wing) where an internal political faction called
Ecodem is led by long-time president, Ermete Realacci (Franco 2014). These days,
some writers, when speaking about ecological protest groups, use the term ‘‘green
archipelago’’ to explain the intricate relationship between environmentalists and
politics. Inside the Italian Communist Party, for example, certain ecological
positions held by individual intellectuals met with internal opposition from both the
working and ruling classes. The left-wing workers looked with suspicion at the new
intellectual passion for ecology, which was accused of being reactionary, anti-
modern, and anti-industrialization, and thus dangerous for the employment of
workers (Nebbia 2007). Some of those figures belonged to the extreme or

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independent political left wing. They highlighted the problem of pollution in the
workplace but the executive board of the old Communist Party chose not to
understand them. This led to major discussions and contradictions about issues
relating to the workplace, the environment and social health. In fact, still today this
dilemma exists. A tragic example can be seen in the recent scandal that derived
from atmospheric pollution at the Steel factory ILVA, in Southern Italy (McKenzie
2012). The very fact that there were unresolved policy issues pertaining to the
workplace and the environment gave the Italian industrial and economic media the
space it wanted to reject ecological theories that had been circulating since the
1970s, theories that they felt threatened a return to Luddite movements (Nebbia
2007). Business interests were able to turn ecological ideas and protests to their
advantage. And while in 1970–1980 the public could still access official data about
the ecological damage stemming from industrialization, as of 1980 the large
industrial capitalists also took over the main national media. News about accidents,
damage, pollution, and environmental contamination became ever more scarce. On
the contrary, great attention was focused on the benefits of industrial production and
how the right kinds of production could lead to environmental wellbeing (Nebbia
2007). A major turning point in political ecology in Italy came after the Chernobyl
accident (1986). In more recent years, the Green Party has been affected by the
dominant pathology in Italian politics: transformismo, a process that has mired the
Party into the swamp of Government. Basically, the Green party’s environmentalist
approach is no different from that of the leading party. An example of this can be
seen in the Zero Waste policy: initially the Green Party was against incinerators,
then its position became ambiguous, and then it changed completely. Now it
supports the burning of waste, going against the grassroots of environmentalism
(Ercolini 2014). In 2013, a new phase of national environmentalism began with a
new party. The goal of Green Italia is to restore an autonomous and credible
presence of Ecology in Italian politics (Bianchi and Della Seta 2014).

The Ethical Message of Laudato sı̀ and the Moral Choices Behind
Environmental Issues

There is a vivid temptation to define the ethical content of the Encyclical Letter
Laudato sı̀. This could be due to the rigid forms of classification in the subject of
environmental philosophy. In fact, the Letter could be seen as an expression of weak
anthropocentrism in the vein of a ‘‘reverence for life’’ philosophical trend.
Alternatively, it could be framed by biocentric and holistic ethics where the intrinsic
value of ecosystems is established.
The old criticism against the Judeo-Christian roots of the environmental crisis are
generally considered outdated. Nevertheless, during the official presentation of the
Encyclical Letter Laudato sı̀, in Vatican City in June 2015, the accusation written by
Lynn White in the famous 1974 article was once again cited. This means that the
publication of the Encyclical Letter represented a kind of revenge of the Catholic
world from an ethical point of view. As a matter of fact, the Pontifex communicates
an image of the Cosmos to us that spurns a strict anthropocentrism and aims for a

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harmonic and interconnected vision of the universe (Creation). Different biological

species are not contingent exploitable resources, they have intrinsic value, and are
not a function of humankind themselves (Spadaro 2015). According to Pope Francis
(2015), ‘‘a misguided anthropocentrism need not necessarily yield to ‘‘biocentrism,’’
for that would entail adding yet another imbalance, failing to solve the present
problem and adding new ones. Moreover, the Bible has clearly no place for a
tyrannical anthropocentrism, and the Catechism of Catholic Church clearly and
forcefully criticizes a distorted anthropocentrism’’ (Pope Francis 2015).
Instead, the reasons for the ecological crisis are due to the philosophy of the
modern era, which can be seen as a separation between a description of reality
(ecology) and its ethical rules (economy). There is a separation of facts and values.
Modern culture today cannot learn from the limits of reality. Humankind has lost its
ability to recognize both symbols and ethical messages, which are, instead, an
intrinsic part of reality. ‘‘Modern anthropocentrism, in fact, has paradoxically ended
up prizing technical thought over reality, since the technological mind sees nature as
an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere ‘‘given’’, as an object of utility,
as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a
mere ‘‘space’’ into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference’’ (Pope
Francis 2015). Therefore, ‘‘contemporary societies, especially in the richer region of
the World, are characterized by a cultural configuration comprising a number of
interconnected elements: rampant individualism, anthropocentrism, consumerism,
relativism, and what the Encyclical calls the technological, technocratic or techno-
economic paradigm. What unifies these disparate cultural elements is an
instrumental reasoning—a form of reasoning that focuses on the most powerful
means for achieving goals rather than the ethical status of the goals themselves. This
type of reasoning is a pervasive feature of contemporary culture, characterizing the
mindsets of both ordinary people and elites, and contrasts with ethical reasoning
anchored in concern about the intrinsic moral qualities of actions’’ (Wright 2015).
The criticism expressed earlier against contemporary technocracy and the
omnipresent technocratic paradigm could be considered a valid outcome of
environmental ethics. For this reason the philosophical position of the Encyclical
Letter may be best summarized as ecological humanism (Morandini 2015). Indeed,
it affirmed a new paradigm in ethics: the notion of ‘‘our common home.’’ This
position substitutes another trend in environmental ethics known as ‘‘lifeboat
ethics.’’ With this comes an imminent necessity for a renewed ethics of
responsibility, expressed in the Encyclical Letter with these words: ‘‘Although the
post-industrial period may well be remembered as one of the most irresponsible in
history, nonetheless there is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of twenty-first
century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsi-
bilities,’’ and ‘‘while the existing world order proves to be powerless to assume its
responsibilities, local individuals and groups can make a real difference. They are
able to instill a greater sense of responsibility, a strong sense of community, a
readiness to protect others, a spirit of creativity and a deep love for the land’’ (Pope
Francis 2015). These words express an ethics of caring. It is positioned at the base of
a moral theory on environmental ethics, which can ostensibly be defined by
Leopold’s Land Ethics (Armandi 2006). In short, Pope Francis seems to express a

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kind of renewed Leopoldian Land Ethics. In Leopold’s line of thinking, we find an

awareness of both social-economic history and environmental history, which tend to
converge. This figurative intersection needs a new synthesis and a broader vision
regarding the phenomena of environmental degradation. A synthesis can be found in
Leopold’s pioneering concept of Wilderness. An interaction between Society and
Nature or rather between Economy and Ecology, two faces of the same concept,
reflect the same argument that Pope Francis broadcast around the world. There are
numerous links between the land ethics of Aldo Leopold and the ethics of the
Catholic Church: our planet is a common home for mankind; it is impossible to
apply the principles of classic political economy in a world with limited resources;
there is a Biblical foundation for the relationship between Man and Nature which
goes against non-religious environmental thought; there is a strong necessity to
affirm the role of the State in environmental policies against the ‘‘invisible hand’’
that drives the neo-liberal market; there is an absence of that naivete that believes
that the fundamental values for society can be deduced from the observation of
Nature. All of these points in some way transform environmental Catholic ethics
into a renewed version of universal Land Ethics. Thus, even if we start from
different cultural and religious backgrounds, an ethical meeting point can be found
without either secularizing the content of the Encyclical Letter or by sacralizing
Aldo Leopold’s message.

Conclusions

In this article we have attempted to unite the innovative aspects and ethical message
of Laudato sı̀ with the history of political environmental movements in Italy,
although our description of the latter was not in any way exhaustive. In fact, certain
dramatic moments in recent history, however, merit mentioning.
Starting in the 1980s, Leftist parties in the Italian Parliament took over the
domain of environmental awareness, appropriating it away from the public. As a
result, environmental questions have since been a cultural prerogative of left-wing
movements, be they radicals or communists. The birth of the Green Party in Italy
only served to ratify this cultural appropriation. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church
either maintained a marginal position or presented strong opposition with respect to
the mainstream beliefs that nurtured the green organizations. Specifically, the
Church looked askance on certain extreme biocentric ethical positions that were in
favor of abortion or family planning.
Environmentalist movements were represented by many associations in civil
society, many of which were linked to the Green Party, a party that had its last
heyday in the national elections of 1992. At that time it won sixteen seats in
Parliament (Chamber of Deputies). Ever since then, however, the reformist force of
the Green Party has withered (cf. Bianchi and Della Seta 2014). In a final analysis,
the Green Party was never able to free itself from its heavy ideological cloak. It
spoke to the left and extreme left wings, and in particular to the Italian Communist
Party, the most important in Europe until the 1980s. Thus it can be fairly said that
the Green Party was never super partes with respect to the left and right in the

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Italian Parliament. This explains why the current dilemma between workplace
safety and environmental protection has not yet been solved. The dilemma,
ultimately, is also the origin of multiple social fractures in Italian society. In this
sense, the ILVA crisis in Taranto, mentioned previously, is paradigmatic. On one
hand, the cultural struggle promoted by the Green movements in the 1970s and
1980s prophesied the current ecological and economic crisis. However the absence
of a permanent political delegation in the Italian Parliament led to the slow
disappearance of the Green Party from the public scene. In fact, it has been partially
reabsorbed by the political forces of the left, such as the Democratic Party, which
today leads the Italian Government. Some Green activists have turned towards the
new political forces, such as the Five Star Movement (M5S), a stakeholder’s
movement that fights incinerators, garbage dumps and the corruption that surrounds
waste management in Italy. Tension and disorganization within the Green Party
have also led to a distancing of local activists from the party directorate and political
representatives. Political ‘‘transversality’’ of environmental issues has led to a
reduction in the number of spokespersons belonging to environmental movements
within the Italian Parliament, or their exclusion from the main media networking
and broadcasting channels (TV and newspapers). Either way, their political
contribution was relatively insignificant because they were held back by orders
coming from the heads of other parties. They were absorbed by the Italian party
system, which can be characterized by strong control of the base from the higher
levels.
The historical decline and insignificance of ‘‘Green stakeholders’’ in Parliament
is similar to the recent history of the Catholic Party and its political ups and downs
since the 1990s. In Italy, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, political
parties with ethical agendas had been steamrollered by the bipolar Parliamentary
system. In this cultural and political context, the ethical effects of the Encyclical
Letter Laudato sı̀ could play an important role. The Letter could coalesce people
around a new environmental spirit that has long been repressed, either because it
was weak in numbers of followers or extreme in ideology. The message of Laudato
sı̀ invites individuals to take a position with respect to the moral question of the
environmental crisis before calling on collective groups. Not by chance, as
described above, the past collective political forms organized around ‘‘green ideals’’
in Italy all failed. The Italian situation contradicts Wright’s thinking, according to
which ‘‘political mobilization needs to be part of the strategy.’’ This strategy gives
priority to the collective bodies over individual awareness in organizing political
environmental mobilization. For Wright, ‘‘except for a few passing references to
citizen pressure, and efforts to the ecological movement, the Encyclical is silent on
the need for mobilized confrontation’’ (2015). On the contrary, the centrality of the
individual as a moral agent who can address the environmental problem is in
keeping with both the individual’s ‘‘forward-looking responsibility,’’ as proposed by
Nihlén (2009), and the Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis. Regarding the
responsibility of the institutions or collective bodies versus those the individual’s
responsibilities, Nihlén Fahlquist writes that ‘‘government and corporation have a
great forward-looking responsibility to create opportunities for individuals to
behave responsibly and act in environmentally friendly ways,’’ but at the same time

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‘‘it is reasonable to hold the individual responsible in a forward-looking sense,’’ and

‘‘different contexts and different extents to which individuals have the capacity and
resources to assume such responsibility should be taken in account.’’ In fact,
Fahlquist sees the responsibility of an ethical approach as a virtue. As a parallel, it is
interesting to outline how Pope Francis ‘‘speaks’’ in similar terms about the
‘‘ecological virtues’’ (Pope Francis 2015). Long-term responses to the problems of
climate change ‘‘should encourage virtuous individuals, as citizens and consumers,
i.e. for example to have people embrace green virtues’’ (Nihlén 2009). Similarly, in
his Letter, Pope Francis launches the idea of ‘‘ecological citizenship’’ (Pope Francis
2015). If we consider the Common and Differentiated Responsibilities (CDR)
associated with the large social bodies as a ‘‘principle stating that rich countries
should bear a greater proportion of responsibility for climate change’’ (Nihlén
2009), and in line with the above mentioned, collective forward-looking respon-
sibility, we see a trace of this notion in the part of Laudato sı̀ that regards climate
change where Pope Francis discusses the concept of ‘‘differentiated responsibility’’
according to the different ‘‘health of nations.’’
The universal call to ‘‘all men and women of good will’’ for their involvement in
safeguarding the environment and fighting poverty should spark new feeling among
Italian environmentalists, and unite Catholic and non-Catholic social forces. The
fact that Italy is still a Catholic nation cannot be seen as an independent variable
when it comes to the effects of the Encyclical message on Italian society. This
statement finds support in light of the historical role assumed by the Catholic
Church in Italy with regard to environmental questions. Paradoxically, running
counter to all obvious expectations, the religious character of the Italian nation
distorted the common perception of environmental challenges. It is enough to think
of the role played by the ecclesiastic hierarchies during the pontificate of Pope Pius
XII (1939–1958), when hybrid maize cultivars promoted by the American cartel of
seed industries were introduced into Italy to diminish widespread poverty in the
Italian countryside (Bernardi 2014), vanquishing the local cultivar of the same
agricultural species. Or, the neutral position assumed by the Secretary of the Italian
Episcopal Conference Mons. Camillo Ruini on the use of genetically modified
plants in agriculture, when he was asked to comment on the issue by former
Ministry of Agriculture Luca Zaia (ANSA 2009). Although Italian people
prevalently belong to the Catholic religion (about 85 %) there is no automatic
social mechanism that encourages them to accept the environmental message of
Pope Francis. The recent history of this country demonstrates that the main
exponents of Green movements come from remote cultural environments with
respect to Catholicism. This notwithstanding, it is not by chance that in Italy the
national economy is more environmentally and socially oriented compared to
Germany, where, paradoxically ‘‘Green culture’’ is traditionally well-rooted and
politically stable at a regional level. In fact, a recent study (cfr.: Bianchi and Della
Seta 2014) underlined how Italy reduced their domestic consumption of raw
material by 23 % (minus 22 million tons extracted by the Planet) and the 24.1
million tons were recycled in 2010—the highest number reached in the EU in recent
times. This new direction in the Green economy in Italy is due more to the Italian
people than to state politics. It has not been shaped by the current economic crisis,

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which has reduced both domestic demand of goods and the GDP. Italy has managed
to reach partially good results and improve its Green sector thanks to an
unconscious attitude of the Italian people and their culture regarding the
environment and not because of their religious background. Perhaps it is for this
reason that the message of Laudato sı̀ is so well understood by Italian people.

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