EarthBeat

The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Bangladesh, and the local Catholic Church are making a difference by addressing the persistent challenge of access to safe drinking water.

Three months after the murder of Juan López, a Honduran church worker and environmental activist whose death was publicly mourned by Pope Francis, the bishops of Latin America are raising awareness of attacks against those fighting for social justice in the continent.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, an epidemiologist and pediatrician who has studied the health impacts of plastics, spoke with EarthBeat after U.N. negotiations adjourned Dec. 2 without a treaty to address plastic pollution.

In an exclusive, RNS is publishing the leaked minutes of a heavenly committee on the future of humanity and the Earth, weighing in on global warming's progression, which if not stopped will have catastrophic consequences for the planet and its inhabitants.

Assuring the crowd of the sustainable harvesting of the tree, the pope compared the rings in the 98-foot-tall tree to the generations of believers gathering around the single image of Jesus.

Vatican journalists were escorted inside the Vatican, passing through a parking lot with still-wrapped electric car charging stations, as the city-state continues in its effort to achieve zero emissions. Francis, sitting on his wheelchair, met with 15 members of the creative and directive team of Mercedes-Benz, which has been a key provider of popemobiles for the Vatican for almost 100 years, though this is the company’s first fully electric offering.

With the aim to improve native crop farming capacity within villages, Caritas Bangladesh promotes ways for farmers to identify and save indigenous seeds as well as natural methods for cultivating them.

Negotiations in South Korea were expected to deliver a treaty on plastics two years in the making, but the U.N. meeting adjourned early Dec. 2 with delegates for some 170 nations still deadlocked on key issues.