Filipino climate activist Yeb Saño to open conference with Pope Leo XIV

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None other than Filipino climate activist Yeb Saño will open the Raising Hope Conference, which will gather global leaders from various sectors in Italy beginning October 1, 2025. 

Pope Leo XIV is the guest of honor of the conference, which celebrates of the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si, the seminal letter that Pope Francis wrote, shaking the world awake to "the moral urgency of the climate crisis." It was published in 2015, that ahead of the Paris Agreement that sought to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial level and well below 2C.

Pope Leo will arrive on October 1, with testimonies immediately delivered by Sano.

"It is a profound honor to represent the Philippines in the Laudato Si Movement and to stand side by side with Pope Leo XIV at the Raising Hope Conference, " Saño told GMA News Online.

Once the lead climate negotiator of the Philippines and the executive director go Greeneace Southeast Asia, Saño is currently the executive director of non-profit SIKAT (Sentro para sa Ikauunlad ng Katutubong Agham at Teknolohiya). He is a board member of international NGO 350.org and sits as the chair of the board of directors of the Laudato Si Movement, which was born shortly after the Laudato Si was published.

But a decade since then, "we are left with more questions than answers," Saño said.

"Our current situation is deeply worrying, with the necessary actions not commensurate what was, is required to respond to the depending crisis."

According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2024 was not only the hottest year on record, it was also when global average surface temperatures passed the 1.5C limit set by the Paris Agreement, settling at 1.55C above pre-industrial levels. 

But the Raising Hope Conference isn't just to mark the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si.

Said Saño, "We also answer a question that grows more urgent with every sunrise, every wildfire, every war, every flood: In the face of this deepening crisis, how do we dare to raise hope?" 

Saño is the only Filipino speaker in the Raising Hope Conference lineup, which also includes Hollywood actor Arnold Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brazil's minister of the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva, and climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. See the complete lineup of Raising Hope here. — LA, GMA Integrated News