At the Raising Hope conference in Rome, Pope Leo XIV blessed a 20,000-year-old piece of Greenland glacial ice brought onstage by artist Olafur Eliasson. The ice, which had already broken away from the Greenland ice sheet, was transported from Nuup Kangerlua fjord with the help of geologist Minik Rosing. Eliasson documented the event on Instagram, emphasizing that the blessing underscored the need to recognize nature's inseparability from humanity.
This event matters because it merges contemporary art with religious and environmental advocacy ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil. Eliasson's gesture—following his earlier Ice Watch installations—uses a tangible, melting artifact to dramatize the accelerating loss of Greenland's ice sheet, which NASA estimates is shrinking by 270 billion tons annually. Pope Leo XIV's participation signals his early papacy's focus on ecological issues, highlighting the moral and spiritual urgency of the climate crisis.