“It falls to scientists, who work free of political, economic or ideological interests, to develop a cultural model which can face the crisis of climatic change and its social consequences, so that the vast potential of productivity will not be reserved only for the few”. This is the task that Pope Francis entrusted to the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences who were received in audience in the Vatican today. “Just as the scientific community, through interdisciplinary dialogue, has been able to research and demonstrate our planet’s crisis – Pope Francis explained in detail –, so too today that same community is called to offer a leadership that provides general and specific solutions for issues which your plenary meeting will confront: water, renewable forms of energy and food security”. Hence the need to “create, with your cooperation, a normative system that includes inviolable limits and ensures the protection of ecosystems, before the new forms of power deriving from the techno-economic model causes irreversible harm not only to the environment, but also to our societies, to democracy, to justice and to freedom”.