"The whole church must become ecological because every Christian needs to live his or her life in harmony with nature and with others," the Archbishop of Huancayo in the Peruvian altiplano, told La Croix on June 12, 2013.

It is clear that Archbishop Barreto is perfectly in sync with Pope Francis in this area — and not simply because, like Jorge Bergoglio, he has been a Jesuit since 1961.

Appointed by Pope Francis as part of the Preparatory Synod on Amazonia, which will take place in Rome in October 2019, Archbishop Barreto, 74, has worked tirelessly to defend the environment.

"Everything that affects the water, the air and the earth also affects people, and particularly the poor!" he said.

"So, defending the environment also means helping the poor to live better," he said in 2013.

After completing his training in Spain, he returned to Peru, where he was appointed as rector of a seminary. Prior to his appointment to Huancayo, he was Vicar Apostolic of Jaen en Peru o San Francisco Javier.

Round table on the environment

After arriving in the Archdiocese of Huancayo, he became familiar with La Oroya, a mining city of 35,000 people, which is often considered to be one of the most polluted cities in the world because of its copper and lead smelters.

Following a miners' strike in 2005, which led to confrontations with the police, Archbishop Barreto established a "round table on the environment" with various institutions in the region.

As a result, the government ordered the US company, Doe Run, which has operated a mine there since 1997, to implement a program to clean up and manage the local environment. Continue reading

Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Huancayo said the encyclical, to be released on June 18, will have many critics.

This is because "because they want to continue setting rules of the game in which money takes first place".

"We have to be prepared for those kinds of attacks."

The archbishop said that there would controversy once people had read the Pope's new encyclical because resisting the "throwaway culture" by being satisfied with less means "putting money at the service of people, instead of people serving money".

Archbishop Barreto worked closely with then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in 2007 on a document by the Latin American bishops' council that included an unprecedented section on the environment.

The archbishop was not involved with the drafting of the new encyclical.

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