In the interview, recorded at the Financial Times studio, Br Stephen highlighted the central role of Catholic Social Teaching in guiding our investment decisions and emphasised the significant impact companies are having on the climate crisis. You can watch a clip of the interview here.
Br Stephen said:
"The church recently produced a document called Mensuram Bonam (2022) and Pope Francis had a document in 2015, Laudato Si’, which talked about ecology, not just from an environmental point of view but how everything is linked, both the social situation and the climate. So, this has become a priority on where and how we work with asset managers [and] with other networks.”
Over the past two years, we have stepped up our ethical investment activities around climate change. In 2024, we joined other investors in calling on major companies to give shareholders a vote on their climate transition plans, and pressed HSBC to provide clearer details on how it intends to meet its environmental targets, advocating for greater transparency and accountability in the bank’s climate strategy.
In the interview, Br Stephen also referred to the theological roots of this work:
"Catholic Social Teaching in the modern era started with concern for workers’ conditions. The previous Pope, Leo XIII, in the late 1800s, produced a document very concerned about the situation for workers at the time (Rerum Novarum).”
We continue to honour this legacy, for example by supporting initiatives that uphold workers’ rights at companies like Amazon.
Br Stephen added:
"All our investable world needs to change to a more sustainable world. No company is lily white in that sense, so there’s always something to work on. There’s a scale of work – at the worst, divestment, because divestment doesn’t really change them (the companies). It makes a point, and it needs to be explained why, and that might have some effect, but it doesn’t really change the economics of the situation.”
The full interview is available to MandateWire subscribers only. However, if you would like to know more about our work, please read our Integral Ecology Quarterly Update, our regular publication that provides quarterly briefings on our sustainability and ethical‑investment activities.
