As the internet erupted over Pope Leo’s blessing of a 20,000-year-old block of melting Greenland ice, I remained happily oblivious to the firestorm while delivering some lectures on creation in the Bay Area. After completing my work, I went hiking with my daughter among the majestic granite cliffs and ancient sequoias of Yosemite National Park. When I finally returned from being immersed in the world of the real and re-entered the digital ether, I quickly realized that this was not a storm I could disregard—one that had unsettled many of the faithful in recent days.
I began drafting this piece before the recent ice blessing controversy, and so its primary intent is not to pass judgment on Leo’s actions. However, seeing as the elephant (or block of ice) in the room cannot be ignored, I’ll begin by offering my reaction to the episode. From there, I’ll proceed to the central purpose of this essay, which is to reflect on the heart of what Leo has sought to convey throughout his pontificate thus far concerning creation.
The chief task before me, then, is to uncover the papal lessons hidden beneath the ice, so to speak.
A cold reception
Although many have characterized Leo’s act as pagan, I’m not especially disturbed either by the Holy Father’s blessing of the ice or by his accompanying remarks when viewing the whole through a Catholic sacramental lens. The Church has a venerable tradition of blessing all manner of physical realities, including fields, animals, and—notably—water. Further, I agree with Sohrab Ahmari’s pushback against those who argue that a pope has no business speaking about the environment when so many children are being aborted each day. As he rightly observes, “The same worldview that impels popes to speak out against abortion and euthanasia also demands social justice and careful stewardship of the planet.”
Indeed, our recent popes have expended significant effort expounding on the right to life of the unborn—a truth more commonly appreciated by conservatives in the United States. At the same time, they have frequently addressed matters of economic justice, poverty, and the environment—even if these issues are (rightly or wrongly) typically considered the prerogative of the progressivist agenda. So, again, I’m not at all bothered that Leo decided to take up the theme of the environment last week, even the charged topic of climate change. Neither Leo nor Francis was the first pope to do this. So, there should be nothing surprising here for a Catholic, even as we should also be aware that papal statements affirming mainstream climate science are prudential and scientific judgments rather than formal definitions of faith proclaimed ex cathedra.
Having said this, as a member of the Catholic flock, I must admit that I found the ice-blessing event rather ill-conceived and, at times, cringeworthy. Perhaps others found this service moving, and I don’t mean to make light of that. For my part, I found it hard to watch. Again, the blessing itself was fine—the pope was being pope—but what got me was the saccharine tune prefaced by a botched pronunciation of Laudato si’ and topped off with cardinals taking part in an awkwardly choreographed banner-waving display. If the whole thing struck you as either more fitting or more troubling than it did me, fair enough.
Chilling out about the Pope
Beyond the unfortunate optics—and questions about how much carbon was expended to obtain and transport that ice and where the now-holy water is at the present moment—my deeper reaction is one of hope tempered by disappointment at the continued lack of nuance in the way both Francis and, to this point, Leo have addressed climate change.
But, of course, our personal opinions are ultimately irrelevant, which brings me to my next point: Without succumbing to naivete, we need to chill out and stop fueling the algorithm machine with endless shouting matches over every last thing a pope says or does, fixating on it as though all his words and actions must be infallible (I don’t know that I would go as far, but I think Amy Welborn is onto something here,) Cy Kellett and Joe Heschmeyer are spot on when they say that all the constant complaining and critiquing is spiritually corrosive. Yet, this malaise seems to infect nearly every comment box I’ve ever dared to open—Catholic or otherwise. Whether it’s about a papal statement or pickles, many people on the internet inevitably find a way to tear each other down.
If you’re reading this, chances are that you, like me, are not the pope. That being the case, we owe him filial piety in receiving his teaching, and this includes the humility to admit that we, as limited creatures, are not always in the best position to judge matters objectively. Meanwhile, these days, anyone with a screen can be his own magisterium, confidently handing down infallible pronouncements about whatever the week’s global drama happens to be. However right one may be—or imagine oneself to be—in these judgments, Heschmeyer offers sage counsel:
You don’t need to blast on Twitter your feelings about everything the Pope does or everything anyone does…[I]f you’re choosing to get upset about irrelevant things, you are the problem. You’re not the only problem, but you are the problem.
And this is where I think our Holy Father let slip a moment ripe for something greater. Despite all the theatrics on social media, a balanced approach to this matter is entirely possible. Indeed, we can hold two things together simultaneously: 1) to agree with the pope and the majority of experts that anthropogenic climate change is real, and 2) to insist that the Church’s response must be more nuanced than merely echoing the talking points of international diplomats and NGOs.
As I noted in my analysis of Francis’s apostolic exhortation on climate change, and others like Michael Dominic Taylor have forcefully argued, we need to do better. This means that not only need to reframe environmental discourse within a Christological register (which Leo commendably does), but also to grapple with subtler issues long neglected in ecclesial reflection on this theme, such as the human cost of prevailing climate proposals—many of which are not only wedded to contraception and abortion but also risk depriving the global poor of essential energy resources.
Meanwhile, these efforts often overlook the futility of such sacrifices while the world’s largest emitter, China, barrels full steam ahead with seemingly no moral compass.
In short, I regret having to say it, but I think the Holy Father missed a great opportunity here to say something distinctively Catholic in a context that desperately needs to hear it (a mission we’re trying in small ways to implement in the Center for Integral Ecology at Benedictine College).
But let’s move on to what I wanted to write about in the first place, before the ice blessing incident. As we’ve seen time and again throughout history, our popes have much to teach if we can bear with their human foibles. I’d like, then, to turn to a few of the genuine nuggets of wisdom Pope Leo has offered on creation that I haven’t yet explored in this column but which should not be eclipsed by what is widely regarded as a significant misstep.
The core of Leo’s teaching
Already on several occasions—and independent of the polarizing question of climate change—Leo has reiterated his predecessors’ insistence that care for the created order is a moral priority. But if we want to move beyond the surface to the core of Leo’s teaching on creation, his aforementioned address at the ice blessing is actually a good place to start.
The Holy Father’s remarks from October 1 largely echo the familiar environmental themes of previous pontificates, especially that of Pope Francis. Yet, one line in particular stands out as fresh and incisive. Riffing on the words of St. John, Leo remarks, “We cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care for all that is fragile and wounded.” The line recalls 1 John 4:20 (we cannot love the God whom we have not seen if we do not love our neighbor whom we have seen) and extends its insight to the realm of creation—a move that coheres with the biblical and patristic vision of a covenant that encompasses not only humankind but every creature.
Looking back to Leo’s interventions on creation from earlier this year, we find a thoroughgoing biblical message in his 2025 Pentecost vigil homily, where the pontiff relates, “The earth will rest, justice will prevail, the poor will rejoice and peace will return, once we no longer act as predators but as pilgrims…not greedily exploiting this world, but cultivating it and protecting it.” As an indication of how crucial he considered this point, it appeared in Leo’s homily at his papal inauguration, where he deplores “an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest.”
Yet, in contrast with merely bemoaning the problem or advancing a secular environmentalist solution to it, he suggests a remedy so simple that any of us can be a part of it: “For our part, we want to be a small leaven of unity, communion, and fraternity within the world. We want to say to the world, with humility and joy: Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome his word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to his offer of love and become his one family.”
But the most significant locus of Leo’s teaching on creation that I have yet to document is the homily he delivered at the Borgo Laudato Si’ in Castel Gandolfo on July 9. Once again, Leo’s approach to the subject here is decisively Christian, as he urges us to contemplate nature as a great “cathedral.” Whether he was aware of this or not, Leo’s image happily evokes the words of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, who, during a 1903 campout under the majestic sequoia groves of Yosemite National Park, remarked, “It was like lying in a great solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hand of man.”
Having just visited those groves myself, I experienced a similar sense of awe as I stood dwarfed by trees that have been living and thriving in that same spot since the time of King David 3,000 years ago. As one who also loves the soaring vaults of Gothic cathedrals, I sometimes ponder whether I’m more moved by the great cathedrals of medieval Christendom made by the art of man or by God’s most sublime works wrought directly in nature. In truth, I think the answer is whichever one I happen to be contemplating at the moment. Thankfully, the Catholic both–and spares us from choosing: we can delight in both the cathedral of nature and the cathedrals of stone, just as the Fathers taught us to read both the book of creation and the book of Scripture.
But back to Leo’s homily. After elaborating the metaphor of creation as a cathedral, he turned to the symbolism of water—both as the material foundation of baptism and as the setting for the Gospel account of the tempest on the Sea of Galilee. Building on its literal meaning as a historical event some two thousand years ago, Leo interprets it morally, noting that the terror of the disciples before the storm is “a fear shared by a large part of humanity today,” reminding us that no matter what happens, Christ can calm the storm of our lives. In light of this, he insists, we should be asking ourselves: “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt 8:27)
Like the disciples, Leo adds, we too should stand in awe before the Lord’s power revealed in creation. Furthermore, he exhorts us to imitate our Lord, who did not merely wield raw power over nature but also had a “deep connection with that land and those waters, with the rhythm of the seasons and with the life of creatures.”
To draw near to our Lord by discovering the beauty of creation in our own lives, Leo teaches that we must routinely take time to behold how the infinite love of God shines forth in every one of his finite creatures. Like Augustine and Aquinas in centuries past, the pope observes that human sin blinds us from seeing creation as a divine epiphany, thereby leading us to treat it without the reverence proportionately due as the divine gift that it is. As a corrective, the Holy Father offers wise counsel for our time:
Only a contemplative gaze can change our relationship with creation and bring us out of the ecological crisis brought on by the breakdown of our relationship with God, with our neighbors and with the earth that is the effect of sin.
Pope Leo’s coda on creation and the Eucharist
A fitting place to conclude is where Leo brought his July 9 message to a close—by turning to the Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian life.
“It is in the Eucharist,” he teaches, “that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation.” Humbling himself to become present in a mere “fragment of matter,” Leo notes that Christ in the Eucharist comes “not from above, but from within.” As Herbert McCabe, O.P., and Pope Benedict XVI, among others, have likewise affirmed, transubstantiation does not annihilate creation, but transfigures and elevates it.
At the end of his reflection, Leo returns to his Augustinian roots, describing the Eucharistic banquet as the locus where heaven and earth, creation and man, unite in a “cosmic hymn of praise.” Echoing the memorable entreaty from St. Augustine’s Confessions, he prays, “Let Your works praise You, that we may love You; and let us love You, that Your works may praise You.”
It is here that Leo is at his best, as he articulates the reciprocal relationship between man’s praise of God and the flourishing of creation. Whatever one may make of the recent ice-blessing controversy, we would do well not to lose sight of this enduring insight: the Church’s vision of creation and its care is no mere pious addendum to the faith but an invitation to behold the love of God made manifest in the world all around us.
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We read: ‘This means that not only need to reframe environmental discourse within a Christological register,,,,’
Three points:
FIRST, Mention of Galilee might conjure an earlier mishandling of science, and now to do things better…recalling the 17th Century and the 20th-century Fr. Le Maitre’s Big Bang, today to depoliticize and de-theologize current climate science…why not the harmonious meme of “Galilee & Galileo”? A missed opportunity!
SECOND, if our technologies and consumerist economies are crossing some red-line boundaries to our changing ecological niche on spaceship earth—and even if all (!) of the problem is simply cyclical earth science and cosmology—the “Christological register” is in either case one of Solidarity (with future generations)—this as a mainstream element of Catholic Social Teaching.
THIRD, really troublesome would be for the pope to bless H2O in all three of its stages—ice, water, and vapor—this message could be interpreted as an endorsement of ancient “modalism”. The heresy that the Trinity is a God of three faces, and not the Unity of three distinct Persons. Much worse even than genuflecting to Pachamama!
The problem with the present and most recent past Popes is that they (like far too many of our clergy) engage in vapid symbolic acts. Pachamama comes to mind, aliobg with Leo’s block of ice. We do NOT worship earth; we worship the One True Trinitarian God. We ought to respect God’s creation and do nothing that smacks of worshipping it as do the pagans. The Pope needs to consider and weigh carefully every word he utters and every one of his public acts lest he sail the barque of Peter into an iceberg of Titanic proportions. Some of us have had our fill of Popes exercising their office by the seat of their pants and creating unnecessary turmoil in the Church. I, for one, believe Leo was “played ” by the woke-meisters on the world stage. Let’s have no more of these antics.
The credibility of the Church would be less compromised if clerics had operated only by the “‘seat’ of their pants”….and then there’s the optics, after car[di]nal Fernandez’s blessing in Fiducia Supplicans to LGBTQers as “couples”, whether Pope Leo on thin ice was “‘played’ by the wokemeisters” into blessing frigidity alongside marital fecundity.
I am certainly not a Ph.D. when it comes to ecological science, but isn’t it true that the climate of the earth has changed several times since “the beginning” (which believe happened at God’s creation of the universe)?
Perhaps there have been changes in the theories about why the dinosaurs all died out, but the last I heard, it was because the earth’s climate became colder and the dinosaurs couldn’t survive (except for a few species who might, according to the testimonies of supposed eye witnesses on various trusty TV channels, are still surviving in the unexplored regions of Alaska and other Arctic locations).
Or this all the teachings of the fundamentalist quacks and the earth really IS in desperate trouble and may go to ruin at any time?
I’m not sure who to trust and believe.
We have definitely had an extremely hot summer in the area of the U.S. where I live, but…according to history, it’s ALWAYS been hotter here than in the rest of the U.S.A.!! So I’m not ready to attribute this to global warming, especially because it seems that we are having a typical cool but still sweater-wearable fall. Yesterday I started out with my air-conditioning, and eventually had to turn on my heat, and then I turned the whole thermostat off and went outside, and then I turned the heat back on before bed!!
I also can’t help but think that the architecture of many of our HGTV-inspired “megahouses” are contributing in some way, and that we as human beings have become somewhat “wimpy” when it comes to being cold–and it doesn’t help that we are wearing silly little “fashionable” winter wear that wouldn’t keep a penguin warm.
Lots of the teenagers seem to dare the cold by wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoody during the below zero weather, and no warm coat, hat, scarf, boots, gloves or mittens–of course these kids are cold!! And silly women do the same thing–wearing short skirts or thin leggings, and a fashionable but freezing piece of covering that passes for a “coat.” L.L. Bean, we need you more than ever (but you’re too expensive unless we find your great stuff at garage sales or thrift shops!)!
I’m just not sure what to believe about “climate change.” The one thing I don’t agree with is that we should make drastic changes to anything except our wardrobes, and perhaps do something about our continued weight gain (perhaps by giving our abundance of food in the U.S.A. to the people who are starving in this world). I also think that we can trust that God won’t allow us to destroy ourselves and the rest of the earth’s population along with the earth until He Himself is ready to return and establish His Kingdom.
Dr. Ramage wrote:
“…I’m not at all bothered that Leo decided to take up the theme of the environment last week, even the charged topic of climate change.”
I, brineyman, on the other hand, am deeply disturbed that Leo would wrap himself in the clown suit of climate changeism.
For, in so doing, he is demonstrating that he is not being led by the Holy Spirit, but rather by that other, Bergoglian “little s” spirit. The one that isn’t holy.
Because climate stability isn’t even a thing. Never has been a thing.
Amid its constantly changing temperatures, the atmospheric conditions on Earth have been generally warmer than they are now. Which has actually helped support life.
The fact is, CO2 is not a pollutant, is not a poison. It is essential to all life on Earth.
More CO2 greens the Earth because CO2 in the air promotes photosynthesis. This results in a growth in global plant biomass, which benefits animals. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crop worldwide.
Anyway, for Leo to presume to preach about global warmism only further undermines the credibility of our poor, crucified Church. She has already been straining mightily due to faithless, spineless, clueless leaders who bestow achievement awards to politicians for murdering children, who persecute Catholics for going to Mass, who advocate for the most unnatural of sins.
Something is gravely, disturbingly disordered — sickeningly evil, in other words — in the upper reaches of the Catholic Church.
Pray for Leo.
And for us.
The Church blesses water, the substance of triune state. The phase change is a problem for God?
Have you heard of Baptism by ice?
What bothers me is how effectively Mass media can weaponize any utterance or snapshot, and how obviously the activities of the highly visible are choreographed to support that mission.
Godspeed!
Nice try. The issue remains that it is impossible to listen to Pope Leo on these issues without hearing the radical ideologies of Franciscus and his successor, Cardinal Czerny, SJ.
The ideological agendas of the Jesuits are still in (total?) control of the Vatican on this (every?) issue. None of the iceberg stunt would be recognized as remotely Christian by any Pope or Saint who preceded Franciscus – especially St. Francis! St. Francis carried a broom when he evangelized around Italy to literally sweep away the filth he found in Churches. He would have gone ballistic with the Pachamama nonsense.
Read Czerny and you will hear Leo. That’s not negativity, it’s reality.
There are hundreds of awful examples. For instance , recognize this talk in Chicago?
https://cruxnow.com/cns/2022/10/czerny-consistent-ethic-of-life-includes-just-economic-social-systems
“Why are Catholics always the last ones still attending Communist Party meetings in NYC?” Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR
Cardinal Czerny, SJ, is WAY past retirement age. This is what the world took away from his event:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPW8660jxgp/
The fact Pope Leo buys into the great climate scam is utterly disappointing. The climate of the earth has been changing since God put it in motion. We have warming periods, frozen periods, and everything in between. God’s earth is perfect. Yes, man destroys it but Net Zero is one the biggest scams running. CO2 is the life giving factor for the entire planet. We don’t need less we need more. Anyone who has read about the building blocks of life knows this to be true. The climate scam is all about wealth transfer from the poor to the ultra rich and Pope Leo should educate himself on this entire issue. It’s not hard to see the holes in the facade.
I’m all for the blessings on water, fields, and other things but the main reason there was such a firestorm on the legitimately cringeworthy spectacle is because people understand the climate scam. One can only hope Pope Leo was made aware of the situation he created and he took it to heart to investigate further what people were saying and learn from it.
For me and many, the Pope made a fool of himself and Catholics around the world.
Yes. Leo blessing the block of ice signifies his blessing for a scam, deception. He is leading the Church astray on this following his predecessor.
Without prejudice to Leo XIV’s intent, there is a strange, lingering sense of the rebirth of the Cosmic Christ in the now notorious blessed block of ice [did a block of ice ever in its wildest dreams imagine such fame?].
First, it’s clear Christ indeed identifies with the poor, the suffering, and the victimized in a significant way. However we respond to them, to the least of us we respond to Him. That said, this nagging gut sense includes Pope Leo XIV’s first exhortation Dilexi Te, in which he says the flesh of Jesus is the flesh of the poor.
Dominican Fr Matthew Fox and his book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance rings an alert. Fox was opposed by Dominican Fr Aidan Nichols, later expelled by the Dominicans and became an Episcopal priest.
“We cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care for all that is fragile and wounded” (Ramage citing Leo XIV). Unfortunately for the block of ice his wildest dreams of fame are dashed. It’s all about protecting the environment.
Aside from Ramage sharing with us his Sequoia Forest Cathedral moment, also for verification experienced by Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir there’s our enhanced order of morals. God forbid that one should curse the ice freezing their water system. Pray we not offend the gods of sea, wind, and air.
I Don’t see a problem with spending public money to study all evidence by unbiased scientists using genuine scientific methods to see if there IS or isn’t evidence to conclude that human follies are indeed contributing to climate change which will endanger life on our planet. If there IS evidence that we are causing dangerous change that we could lessen or correct that it seems a moral imperative that we take action.
So what is the problem with studying the evidence? Perhaps AI would be more objective and less political than our present presenters. Let’s try to set our biases aside and look at facts.
James: get real, it will never happen!
“Beyond the unfortunate optics—and questions about how much carbon was expended to obtain and transport that ice and where the now-holy water is at the present moment…”.
The ” optics” of carbon are compounded by the “optics” of $$$.
The money it took to pay for the labor and ground lifting equipment it took to excavate this approximate 400 lb block of 20,000 year old ice from Greenland, the packaging, the charter jet (I assume), and the identical ground costs in Rome to stage this photo op are clearly quite substantial.
Whatever spin the Vatican wants to put on how money is spent on these theatrics of theirs only reinforces my decision during Leo’s predecessor’s reign to stop donating to Peter’s Pence and instead redirect that money each year to causes such as Samaritan’s Purse North Carolina Relief efforts – which I will be continuing to do!
Plus Arnold Schwarzenegger’s surely thousands of $$$ spent travelling to the Vatican could have been better spent in Los Angeles being given to the victims of the Palisades Fire – instead of standing there waving the large bolt of blue fabric and later, I assume, going to confession there for all the CO2 he personally is responsible for for all the unnecessary fires and explosions in his movies.
I saw this today re. a “Climate Change” activist:
ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF
OCTOBER 10, 2025 11:02
Greta Thunberg’s Sumud Flotilla produced a total of 165 tons of air pollution during its trip from Spain to Gaza, which the energy company Volta Solar calculated to be the same as 206 trips by plane from Tel Aviv to London.
“Over the course of 5 weeks of sailing, the almost 50 vessels in the flotilla consumed a total of about 53,600 liters of diesel,” the study from Volta Solar explained and added, “This fuel consumption is equivalent to direct emissions (tank-to-wheel, TTW) of about 144 thousand kg of CO₂ – that is, about 144 tons of carbon dioxide emitted from the engines alone.”
This climate change agenda is not simply about being stewardship of the planet. Both Francis and Leo are selling the church out to the globalist Agenda 2030. Leo is calling for an “ecological conversion.” This is not the Gospel but another gospel, a false gospel. Arnold schwarzenegger was there at the Vatican as the push for this “new gospel” of man. They want the Church on board to push their net zero salvation of man. Jesus is coming to bring a New Heaven and a New Earth. He calls the Church to proclaim baptism and repentance for sins to prepare for the end of this current world. This “climate change” agenda is for the coming of the antichrist who will tell us there is no other world to come.