Just these days, as Italy and many other parts of the world are experiencing casualties and severe hardship due to exceptional heat waves, Pope Leo XIV has issued an urgent appeal on the climate issue. “It is increasingly evident that our Earth is falling into ruin,” the Pontiff said. He stressed how injustice, violations of international law and peoples' rights, inequality and greed are causing deforestation, pollution and loss of biodiversity worldwide. “Extreme natural phenomena, caused by human-induced climate change, are growing in intensity and frequency,” he warned, “without considering the medium- and long-term effects of human and ecological devastation linked to armed conflicts”. According to the Pope, environmental destruction does not affect everyone equally. "Trampling justice and peace means hitting hardest the poor, the marginalized, the excluded. In this sense, the suffering of indigenous communities is particularly emblematic," he noted. He also pointed out how nature is sometimes turned into a bargaining chip, a commodity to be traded for economic or political gains. “In this scenario, creation becomes a battleground for the control of vital resources: agricultural areas and forests made dangerous by landmines, ‘scorched earth’ policies, conflicts related to water sources and an unequal distribution of raw materials penalize the most vulnerable populations and endanger social stability,” the Pontiff concluded.