The earth cries when it is in pain as a result of environmental degradation. Whenever the earth is in pain, the most vulnerable are impacted most of all. This is the basic message of Leonardo Boff's Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Grito da Terra, Grito dos Pobres), an essential background to ì and Laudate Deum. The former is the ecological encyclical of Pope Francis, while the latter is his Apostolic Exhortation focusing on climate change.

The most threatened of nature's creatures are the poor, Boff emphasises. The Earth is our common home, says Bergoglio. Indeed, we face a common future, as was also underlined by Gro Harlem Brundtland in her UN World Commission on Environment and Development report drawn up in 1987.

The current political discourse is on how environmental damage impacts our quality-of-life through a poor air quality, depleted (and contaminated) water resources, sea level rise, flooding, drought, tropicalisation of the weather, the bulldozing of agricultural land and much more. While this is both realistic and correct, its impact on the vulnerable among us is devastating. More than an impact on their quality-of-life, environmental damage, many a time, threatens their very existence. The tears of the earth are definitely the tears of the downtrodden.

This transforms the debate from one on environmental damage to one on its considerable social impacts, as the two are unmistakably intertwined. At the end of the day, it is all about a lack of environmental justice.

Poverty and environmental degradation are intertwined. A point already made forcefully years ago by former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi when addressing the United Nations Environment Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm in 1972. She eloquently argued: "...... how can we speak to those who live in villages and in slums about keeping the oceans, the rivers and the air clean, when their own lives are contaminated at the source?"

The 1972 Stockholm Conference was the United Nations' first major conference on international environmental issues and marked the definite turning point in the development of international environmental politics. Eventually, over the years, leading to a focus on issues of sustainable development and the formulation and measurement of the Millennium Development Goals as well as the development of an interest in considering the plight of future generations.

The Bergoglio pontificate has been focused on the plight of the vulnerable, those whom society continuously pushes towards its peripheries, and beyond.

This was clear from day one through his choice of name, as a result being the first to use the Franciscan model as a papal roadmap. This was also reinforced on Monday 8 July 2013, very early in his pontificate, in the message conveyed when visiting immigrants at Lampedusa, his first visit outside the Vatican as Pope. Then he chastised all on the culture of indifference.

He had then stated: "The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalisation of indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others; it doesn't affect me; it doesn't concern me; it is none of my business. The globalisation of indifference makes us all 'unnamed', responsible yet nameless and faceless."

This is the essence of the Bergoglio pontificate: improving the plight of the vulnerable among us. Mourning his loss, we appreciate what he stood up for: a pontificate for the poor and the vulnerable, clearly underlining the modern relevance of the Gospels. Hopefully his successor will likewise also seek inspiration from the peripheries of our society.

An architect and civil engineer, the author is a former Chairperson of ADPD-The Green Party in Malta.  [email protected] ,   http://carmelcacopardo.wordpress.com