The executives are from companies such as Exxon Mobil, Eni, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Pemex.

The executives have been invited to the "Energy Transition and Care for Our Common Home" conference because the oil and gas industry needs to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions to honour the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Pope Francis, whose second encyclical Laudato Si' (Care for our Common Home) was released in 2015, is expected to address the conference on Saturday.

He has made climate change a cornerstone of his papacy.

In Laudato Si' Francis says there is a "very solid scientific consensus" that the planet was warming and the Catholic Church should view it as a moral issue.

He also says people must "combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it" because greenhouse gases were "released mainly as a result of human activity."

He has called for policies to drastically reduce polluting gas.

One of the key architects of the pope's encyclical, Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Vatican's department on promoting human development and a firm backer of the need to stem global warming, will address the group, the source said.

Last year, Francis, who strongly supported the Paris agreement on climate change, implicitly criticised the United States for pulling out of the accord.

The chancellor of the academy where the conference will be held, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, called the US withdrawal a "huge slap in the face" for the Vatican.

Source

• Reuters
• Fortune
• Bloomberg
• Image:Bloomberg

A Reuters' investigation has shown some of the largest American Catholic organisations have millions of dollars invested in the energy sector.

Investments range from hydraulic fracturing firms to oil sands producers.

Dioceses with such investments include Boston, Chicago, Baltimore and Toledo.

The holdings tend to make up between 5 and 10 per cent of the dioceses' overall equities investments.

But their fossil fuel holdings have likely triggered losses in recent years due to sliding oil prices.

In his recent encyclical Laudato Si', Pope Francis declared that the use of "highly polluting fossil fuels . . . needs to be progressively replaced without delay".

The Archdiocese of Chicago had "under 8 per cent" of its US$1.65 billion portfolio in fossil fuels, a spokeswoman said.

Chicago archdiocese told Reuters it will re-examine its more than US$100 million worth of fossil fuel investments.

"We are beginning to evaluate the implications of the encyclical across multiple areas, including investments and also including areas such as energy usage and building materials," said Betsy Bohlen, chief operating officer for the archdiocese.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' guidelines on ethical investing warn Catholics and Catholic institutions against investing in companies related to abortion, contraception, pornography, tobacco, and war, but do not suggest avoiding energy stocks.

Fr Michael Crosby, a Capuchin friar who advocates for socially responsible investing in the Church, pointed to a "clash between Pope Francis's vision of the world and the world that the bishops who run the investments live in".

"The bishops are a very conservative group, and I'm not hopeful this will be resolved anytime soon," he said.

Sources

• Reuters
• Image: Libya Business News