"The Immense Cry Channeled by Pope Francis"

Latour, Bruno. “The Immense Cry Channeled by Pope Francis.” Translated by Stephen Muecke. Environmental Humanities 8, no. 2 (2016): 251-55. doi:10.1215/22011919-3664360.

And yet if the power of the Laudato si’ is so strong, it is because its author—and this text, surprising as it may seem for an encyclical, does have an author, a pen, a voice—makes, it seems to me, two major innovations; namely: the link between ecology and injustice and the recognition of the power of the earth itself to act and to suffer. In a really interesting way, these two innovations are associated with the strange word cry, for which Francis is the channel, amplifier, and interpreter (clameur in French, grido in Italian): “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate the questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” (Text from author)

© Bruno Latour 2016. Environmental Humanities is available online only and is published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).