Fifth of seven parts
POPE Francis (Mario Bergoglio, 1936-2025), the first Jesuit pontiff, enriched Catholic social teaching with Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home) in 2015. I was once a researcher at the Jesuit-run Institute on Church and Social Issues (now the John Joseph Carroll SJ Institute on Church and Social Issues). ICSI founder Ben Niebres, SJ, had envisioned thinking through the issues from the viewpoint of CST.
My birthplace also has strong links to the Jesuits. Their missions in Samar (1596-1768) mapped the island’s human and environmental landscape. For governance, they “master-planned” the transformation of scattered, decentralized coastal hamlets and upland river settlements (bungtos) into “pueblos.” In my home province of Eastern Samar, the ancient pueblos were established in Guiuan, Tubig (now Taft), Libas (now San Julian) and Borongan. The modern boundaries still in operation today were physically drawn by 17th-century Jesuit mission centers, according to historical accounts (e.g., by Msgr. Lope Robredillo, SThD). They also served as security advisers for the natives, who were vulnerable to “Moro raids” that sought to capture locals for the slave trade. The iconic Immaculate Conception Church in Guiuan, built with a heavy stone fortress and a watchtower, is an example of Jesuit multi-function architecture.
The Jesuits practiced a form of resource management that directly contrasts with modern extractive capitalism. Their superiors prohibited them from demanding free native labor or keeping personal wealth, so they had to pay for local services and relied on highly sustainable communal farming. We still see today the groundwork of spaces built by early Samareños and Jesuits to support sustainable communities. The modern tragedy is that the land resources mapped by the Jesuits to protect human dignity are now being dug up, stripped of topsoil and exported away.
Laudato Si’ dovetails with the core messages of earlier encyclicals that focus on global peace and North-South relations. Here are examples:
– Pacem in Terris (Pope John XXIII, 1963) preaches that human dignity transcends national borders. Written at the height of the Cold War, it asserts that disarmament, respect for sovereignty and international law are essential for peaceful coexistence.
– Populorum Progressio (Pope Paul VI, 1967) argues that true global stability cannot exist alongside vast economic disparities. Peace requires addressing the structural inequality that leaves wealthy developed nations in control of global capital while Global South nations struggle with poverty and debt.
– Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (Pope John Paul II, 1987) calls for solidarity over political blocs and ways to address structural inequality and debt relief for the Global South. Economic globalization must be guided by an ethical framework centered on human dignity rather than unchecked profit or financial speculation.
– Caritas in Veritate (Pope Benedict XVI, 2009) exhorts ethical globalization, reforming international financial systems to serve all nations.
– With Fratelli Tutti (2020), Pope Francis critiques aggressive hyper-nationalism, xenophobia and the exclusion of migrants. He called for a revitalized diplomacy based on genuine dialogue, multilateral cooperation, and a global economy that prioritizes human lives over financial interest.
Pope Francis frames in Laudato Si’ the environmental crisis as a moral and social failure, expounding on the concept of “ecological debt.” He argues that ecological debt is not an abstract scientific metric but a real, systemic imbalance between the Global North and the Global South, as well as between wealthy extracting corporations and marginalized local communities.
The encyclical puts together at least four core arguments:
1. The global “North-South” asymmetry
Global ecological debt exists because wealthier nations and industrialized centers have disproportionately over-consumed resources and utilized global common spaces (like the atmosphere) for carbon emissions, while the poorest countries suffer the worst consequences of climate change despite contributing the least to it.
Laudato Si’ points out that this debt is rooted in commercial imbalances: “The export of raw materials to satisfy markets in the industrialized North has caused local damage.” This describes the dynamic of large-scale extraction, where the mineral wealth of a developing region is drained away to feed global industries, leaving the host community with the localized ecological ruins.
2. The double standard of multinational corporations
The Pope exposes the rip-off by multinational companies operating in developing nations with lax regulations. These entities do in foreign territories what they would never be permitted to do in their home countries. The encyclical observes that when these extractive companies finish their operations and pull out, “they leave behind great human and environmental liabilities, such as stagnant millions, despoiled lands, depleted agricultural assets, and polluted rivers,” matching the exact definition of an unpaid ecological debt.
3. “Integral ecology”: The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor
The foundational premise of Laudato Si’ is integral ecology — the idea that we are not facing two separate crises (one environmental and one social), but rather “one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.”
When mining destroys a local ecosystem, it simultaneously destroys human dignity, generational livelihoods, and local water security. Therefore, when an external entity incurs an “ecological debt” by damaging the land, they are simultaneously incurring a “social debt” to the people who depend on that land for survival.
4. Reversing the debt narrative
One takeaway from Laudato Si’ is how it completely flips traditional global economic narratives on their head. While international financial institutions often dictate terms to developing regions over their financial debts, Pope Francis argues that it is actually the developed world and wealthy corporate actors who are deeply in debt to the poor peripheries. He asserts that developed nations have a moral obligation to help repay this ecological debt by drastically reducing their non-renewable consumption and actively funding the rehabilitation and clean energy transition of the exploited regions.
Thus, whether it is mining in Hinabangan, Homonhon, Manicani, Nauru, or any open-pit mining on fragile local island ecosystems, these are not isolated corporate activities. They are manifestations of what Pope Francis calls a “throwaway culture” and an economic model that treats both nature and vulnerable human communities as disposable commodities.
email@aberia.xyz