ROME — The Vatican launched a campaign on March 20, 2026, to encourage divestment from mining industries. The campaign urges Catholic institutions to divest from mining industries and align their investments with the church's ecological teachings.

The campaign also involves other Christian organizations and takes as its inspiration Pope Francis's 2015 environmental encyclical "Praised Be." The campaign aims to encourage local churches to review their investment strategies and divest where needed and to share information with Indigenous groups about the types of resource extraction occurring on their lands.

The campaign is the brainchild of the Churches and Mining Network, an existing ecumenical network of Catholic and other Christian denominations active in Latin America.

Yolanda Flores, a leader of the Aymara peoples in Peru, teared up at a Vatican news conference while discussing how Indigenous mothers fear poisoning their children because drinking water had been polluted by extraction runoff. "The big question is: Who finances this? Who provides the money to poison us?" Flores said.

Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini referenced mining operations in Guatemala during his tenure as bishop of San Marcos, where the government allowed a Canadian mining firm to explore and extract silver and gold from the land. "Was it a legal activity? Yes. Was it an activity that promoted the holistic development of those communities? No," Ramazzini said. "In terms of distributive justice: were the mining operations fair? No."

Cardinal Fabio Baggio, deputy director of the Vatican's ecology office, said it is necessary to "also look in one's home" whenever campaigns encouraging divestment are launched.

In 2022, Pope Francis formed an investment committee of church and outside financial experts to guarantee the ethical nature, profitability, adequacy, and risk management of the Holy See's securities investments according to the church's social doctrine. The Vatican bank announced two equity benchmarks that conform to ethical Catholic criteria: the Morningstar IOR Eurozone Catholic Principles and the Morningstar IOR US Catholic Principles.