IN HIS RECENT ENCYCLICAL, LAUDATO SI: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis states that climate change “represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.” He calls for swift action—from reducing individual consumption to hastening the transition toward a clean energy future. Climate Change, he writes, is driven in part “by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels.” Yet the Pope also offers hope for a path forward. “All is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.”

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As Catholic organizations explore how they can answer Pope Francis’s call, many have looked at their investable assets through a new lens, asking themselves:

How can we align our investments with our mission and values? How might our resources be used to meet both the financial and moral imperatives to move toward a clean energy economy? And perhaps most importantly: How do we start?

Catholic organizations have a long history of socially responsible investing, which applies positive and negative screens to investments to align them with Catholic values, while also investing in efforts to address critical societal challenges, including the clean energy sector. A growing number of Catholic and other faithbased institutions are also divesting their assets from fossil fuels, recognizing the inherent negative social and environmental impact of burning coal, oil, and gas.

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As of September 2014, 57 faith-based institutions representing $1.4 billion in assets had divested of fossil fuels. Catholic organizations are also using their assets to influence companies whose shares they own, looking to minimize negative environmental impacts of corporate practices and advance emissions reductions. All of the Catholic organizations profiled in this report are using their assets in innovative ways to act on climate change, aligning their investments with their mission. Each has crafted an approach that allows the organization to meet both its fiduciary responsibility and mission goals.

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