Creation as Sister, Brother, and Mother

Abstract

In 2015, while many Americans acknowledged climate change as a threat, a majority did not view climate change as a religious or moral issue and were unaware of the impacts on the world’s poor. Pope Francis delivered his encyclical in this context and, by using familial metaphors, altered climate change perceptions. Evoking Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis used the metaphors of sister, brother, and mother to shift the audience’s perception of threat: Climate change is not an impersonal, distant risk but one that threatens family. Yet the familial metaphor’s limitation has been an inability to encourage sustained climate change action.