The pontiff has published his first encyclical, which is seen as a direct teaching from the Holy Father, on the environment and climate change.
He said there was an urgent need to tackle "extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems".
The letter added that people in wealthy nations would have to change their lifestyles to help the poor, who are most affected by climate change.
Pope Francis said if there was no change the earth would look "like an immense pile of filth".
"Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain," he said in a direct message to climate change and global warming deniers.
"We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental."
The letter has been sent to 5,000 Catholic bishops worldwide including Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of faithful in England and Wales.
In an interview with Premier he said the document urged people to "think again from a perspective of the wellbeing of the earth and our brothers and sisters in other countries who are desperately poor".
The Cardinal gave his reaction at Our Lady and St Joseph Primary, an eco-friendly school in London, which overlooks the city and Canary Wharf.
Cardinal Nichols said some of those in the city would listen to the Pope's message.
"Some of them are still seriously rethinking their purpose," he said, "to my surprise they've not simply gone back to old ways."
He added: "There are leaders over there who say to me a business cannot expect to survive in a broken society.
"So it is in the best interest of business to attend to the needs of society.
"Not just to serve that society but help repair it.
"So there are enlightened business leaders around but they have to get that message right through their companies.
"Some I know want to do, others are reluctant."
In his encyclical the Pope criticises people who deny climate change.
He warns: "A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system.
"Humanity is called to recognise the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it."
Earlier this month two US presidential hopefuls, Rick Santorum and Jeb Bush, both Catholic, criticised the Pope for speaking out on the issue.
Mr Santorum said Francis should 'leave science to the scientists', but Cardinal Nichols told Premier it wasn't about science.
"If he [Mr Santorum] read it, he'd know it wasn't about science.
"The Pope readily acknowledged the Church does not have scientific answers to provide.
"In fact he says the whole point of this encyclical is to broaden those horizons and certainly to say science doesn't exist in a vacuum."
The Pope has published his letter ahead of a UN meeting on climate change in Paris in December.
The conference will aim for a legally binding and universal agreement on climate change from all the nations of the world.
Francis said: "Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most."
Cardinal Nichols speaking to Premier's Antony Bushfield:
