Asia's largest Catholic country has put global warming at the top of its agenda, following Pope's Francis' warning on climate change.
Catholics in the Philippines are promising to gather 10 million signatures for a petition to pressure world leaders at the United Nations climate summit in Paris in November to take definitive climate action.
"We're getting signatures as a representation of the Catholic's voice on the issue of climate change, especially in pushing global leaders to urgently act," said Lou Arsenio, the local coordinator for the Global Catholic Climate Movement (GCCM), a coalition of more than 140 Catholic groups in the Philippines.
The mission comes after Pope Francis warned in his recent encyclical that climate change requires drastic action.
The Catholic Climate Petition aims to pressure world leaders to "drastically cut carbon emissions to keep the global temperature rise below the dangerous 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold, and to aid the world's poorest in coping with climate change impacts".
The Philippines, a country of about 100 million people, has an estimated 76 million Catholics.
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Article by Desmond Busteed
Desmond Busteed is a multimedia journalist for Premier.