"When the US Supreme Court legalised same-sex marriage in June, the leader of America’s Catholics erupted in white-hot fury, condemning the historic decision as 'a tragic error'.

When a week or so earlier, it fell to Archbishop Joseph Kurtz as leader of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to deliver the official welcome to Pope Francis as he issued his sweeping indictment of the global economic order and its effects on the poor and the environment, the response was several degrees cooler.

Kurtz, while ostensibly endorsing the pope’s call to action, did not join the leader of his faith in condemning pollution as a sin. He did not echo the pope’s call for an urgent phasing out of fossil fuels. And Kurtz most definitely did not join the pope in attributing climate change largely to human activities, and calling out powerful vested interests for seeking to conceal the evidence of climate change. In fact, Kurtz did not mention climate change at all."

Suzanne Goldenberg reports for the Guardian September 16, 2015. [2]