As World Youth Day celebrations continue at Krakow, Poland, a group of young Australians have called on Pope Francis and the Catholic Church to divest from fossil fuels.
A letter from 120 youth groups urge the Vatican to move investments by Catholic organizations and other institutions away from fossil fuels.
To encourage the youth who had gathered from all around the world to take up the cause, the divestment activists held a workshop with the help of a new Divest-Invest toolkit for Catholic Communities.
"If it's wrong to wreck the planet, it's wrong to profit from that wreckage" the activists stated.
Maximilian Kite, a MacKillop Student Association and Member of ACU National Student Association said, "Our generation is the first...to be overwhelmingly affected by a careless world rushing to industrialize and profit from fossil fuels."
"This is a call from us for a complete divestment from the harmful technologies and industries involved in fossil fuels, by a pillar of contemporary society; the Roman Catholic Church," Kite wrote, citing acid rain, air pollution, climate change as some of the environmental problems rising through the usage of fossil fuels.
Doctor Neil Ormerod, Professor of Theology at the Australian Catholic University said that divesting from fossil fuels is a choice to stand with the most vulnerable.
"Those living in energy poverty would benefit most from non-polluting, sustainable, decentralized energy systems that are becoming more affordable by the year," he stated.