Vatican shuffles feet on fossil fuel divestment

Friday, July 3rd, 2015

The Vatican may consider, but is not committed to, divesting its holdings in fossil fuels, an official has indicated.

That is despite Pope Francis’s call in his encyclical Laudato Si’ for bold action to fight climate change and global warming, The Guardian reported.

At a press conference on July 1, Flaminia Giovanelli from the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice spoke to the topic.

“I think that the Vatican bank may think of initiatives which are at the core of this change,” Ms Giovanelli said.

“So we will see in the future . . . it [divestment] may be considered by the Vatican,” she said.

The Guardian article theorised that Ms Giovanelli’s hesitancy might reflect internal divisions about whether investment decisions by the Institute for Religious Works (known as the Vatican bank) ought to reflect Pope Francis’s values.

Cardinal George Pell’s climate-change scepticism was cited.

Canadian social activist Naomi Klein, who is Rome for a conference on Laudato Si’, said she believed that a possible divestment policy was under discussion.

“It is my understanding that this is an issue that is being internally debated and that a lot of issues are up for review and this is being raised,” Ms Klein told the Guardian.

A spokesman for the Vatican bank, Max Hohenberg, said the issue was largely irrelevant because “there really isn’t much to divest”.

He said about 95 per cent of the bank’s assets were invested in government bonds, and the rest was invested in stocks held in investment funds, and that he had no knowledge of what specific stocks were held.

He added that the bank did not have any social investment policies in place, and that establishing one meant that it would likely be seen as a “model” within the Church, “which is obviously quite a big issue”.

Earlier this year, the Church of England announced it would divest itself of 12 million pounds of investment in firms where more than 10 per cent of revenue comes from extracting thermal coal or the production of oil from tar sands.

Sources