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Vatican promotes climate agenda with Lenten ‘carbon fast’ - Stone - 11-05-2026
Vatican promotes climate agenda with Lenten ‘carbon fast’
Vatican officials promoted a 40-day 'carbon fast' during Lent while unveiling plans to utilize AI to monitor global parish eco-commitments.
Vatican officials promoted a 40-day 'carbon fast' during Lent while unveiling plans to utilize AI to monitor global parish eco-commitments.
Nov 5, 2026
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Holy See celebrated the expansion of its global ecological platform by showcasing artificial intelligence surveillance tools and promoting an eco-substitute for Lenten penance, urging faithful to replace traditional mortification with a “carbon fast.”
On November 4, the Holy See Press Office hosted a press conference to mark the fifth anniversary of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform (LSAP), a digital framework launched by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. Officials announced that over 6,200 Catholic institutions and 13,000 participants enrolled in the centralized system, unveiling a strategic plan for the next five years that integrates a planetary “Digital Atlas” tracking climate data, artificial intelligence algorithms to inspect and verify institutional compliance, and a global network of online “Digital Missionaries.”
“During Lent, we often ask ourselves a familiar question: What am I willing to give up? Perhaps a favorite food, a small comfort, or something that has become too important in our daily lives. Some years ago, in the Archdiocese of Bombay, we began asking another question alongside it: What if our fasting could also teach us to care more deeply for creation? We encouraged what we called a carbon fast. It invited people to examine ordinary choices: the electricity we consume, the water we use, the plastic we discard,” Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Allwyn D’Silva of the Archdiocese of Bombay, India, stated.
“A carbon fast lasts forty days. But the decisions our institutions make can shape people’s lives for decades. If our faith can change what we choose for forty days, why should it not change what our institutions choose for the next forty years?” he continued.
“Ten years are not many in the life of the Church, but they are enough to ask what happens when an Encyclical takes root,” Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said in reference to Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’. “I think of the Mass for the Care of Creation, approved by Pope Leo XIV and inserted into the Roman Missal…. Living the vocation to be protectors of God’s handwork is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”
In Traditional Catholic theology, the season of Lent is a sacred time of bodily mortification, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving undertaken to crucify the passions of the flesh, atone for personal sins, and unite the believer with the redemptive Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Program Director Alonso de Llanes announced that the system will monitor participating Catholic institutions worldwide under the “Digital Atlas of Laudato Si’.” The apparatus utilizes an interactive surveillance map that cross-references participating parishes, schools, and monasteries with satellite data on regional carbon emissions, deforestation rates, and extreme weather.
“Let me explain what visitors can do,” Llanes said. “Open the Atlas and select a country or diocese. You can locate participating Catholic institutions and, where they have given permission, view their ecological plans and reflections.”
Llanes then confirmed that the Vatican is preparing AI mechanisms to verify whether Catholic institutions are carrying out their environmental plans, alongside an annual workshop examining AI algorithms: “Through the Atlas, we are bringing together three kinds of information in a single tool: where participating Catholic institutions are present, what their communities are doing, and what environmental data tells us about the places they inhabit.”
“We also want to improve how we evaluate progress,” de Llanes explained. “If an institution reports planting trees, can we learn whether those trees survived? If it adopts an ecological plan, can we understand whether that commitment has changed its decisions or operations? These questions require better data, follow-up, and appropriate verification.”
To enforce this agenda across the digital sphere, the Vatican also instituted a “Digital Missionaries Bootcamp” to deploy trained online activists.