Pope Leo will present ‘Sustainability Medal’ to leftist cardinal
Cardinal Michael Czerny has pushed for ‘far fewer private cars’ and suggested that the Church could ordain ‘women deacons.’
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Tue Sep 15, 2026 - 3:21 pm EDT
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(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV will personally present an eponymous “Sustainability Medal” to its first-ever recipient, Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.
Villanova University, which established the “Pope Leo XIV Sustainability Medal,” announced the upcoming award ceremony on Monday during a press conference in the Vatican’s Sala San Pio X.
Leo XIV, who attended the U.S.-based university in the 1970s, will present Czerny with the medal on October 13 in the Borgo Laudato Si’ garden, part of the Pontifical Gardens of Castel Gandolfo.
The award will recognize Czerny’s years of “remarkable service” for sustainability and honor him as “a leader whose life reflects the very best of what this medal represents,” according to Vatican News.
Czerny, who was prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD) between 2022 and 2026, co-founded the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto in 1979, and was its first director until 1989. From 1990 to 1991, following the murder of six Jesuits and others at the University of Central America in San Salvador, Czerny became the director of the university’s Institute for Human Rights (IDHUCA), a position that had been held by one of the murdered priests.
As head of the Vatican’s DPIHD, Czerny has promoted secular talking points about environmental sustainability, in keeping with the program of Pope Francis. For example, he oversaw the organization’s partnership with a Swedish climate “sustainability” group to print half a million copies of a booklet on the environment to be sent to parishes across the globe. The text discussed “climate change, biodiversity, water, food production, air pollution, sustainable consumption, and links between sustainability and social justice.”
Father Peter Donohue, OSA, president of Villanova University, who announced the award, praised what he described as Czerny’s “extraordinary passion for justice, human dignity, and the care of creation.”
“His witness reminds us that authentic sustainability is never solely about environmental stewardship. It is also about accompanying those who suffer, defending the dignity of the human person, and building a future that leaves no one behind,” Donohue said.
Cardinal Czerny delivered a speech in 2023 to the 4th International Congress on the Care of Creation in Lisbon, in which he claimed that “human activity causing greenhouse gas emissions is the cause of the excessive heat” and that “what is being done is not enough and results are falling short of the target. So things will get worse.”
Czerny also called for “fewer private cars” – a key World Economic Forum talking point – as well an immediate enactment of net-zero policies, and green-oriented finance. He even echoed arguments claiming that recent Canadian wildfires were due to climate issues, whilst evidence increasingly suggests they were due to deliberate arson.
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- Cardinal Michael Czerny
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- climate agenda
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- Pope Leo XIV
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- Sustainability Medal
