Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

UN SECRETARY general Ban Ki-moon last week urged religious groups to “provoke, challenge and inspire political leaders into acting more boldly” on the rapidly advancing climate threat. The major faith groups have real power, he pointed out. They control half the world’s schools (and far more than half in Ireland); they are the world’s third largest category of investors; and they produce more publications than the entire secular press in the EU, writes JOHN GIBBONS

And, more importantly, since they don’t have to run the gauntlet of being elected every couple of years, religious leaders are free to tell the public unpalatable truths from which politicians so often run scared.