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The Vatican may consider, but is not committed to, divesting its holdings in fossil fuels, a Catholic church official has said, despite Pope Francis’s call for bold action to fight climate change and global warming.

The statement – made at a press conference on Wednesday to discuss the pope’s recently released encyclical on the environment – is likely to disappoint climate activists, who have praised Pope Francis’s essay stressing that climate change is mostly a man-made problem…….

Naomi Klein, the Canadian climate activist and author who recentlyjoined forces with the Vatican on the issue of climate change and is in Rome for a two-day conference on the encyclical, said she believed that a possible divestment policy was under discussion.

“It is my understanding that this is an issue that is being internally debated and that a lot of issues are up for review and this is being raised,” Klein told the Guardian………

Klein told the Guardian that she did not believe that the divestment issue was a “linear market argument”, but rather a moral argument about the “immorality” of investing in fossil fuels.

“The encyclical amplifies the moral argument that is a tremendous tool for the divestment movement, no matter what happens at the Vatican,” she said.

While some critics argue that divestment policies alone have little to no impact on corporate profits of major polluters, Klein said she believed that divestment in fossil-fuel companies would “set the political stage” for regulatory actions to recapture some of their profits, though a carbon tax or increased royalty payments on extraction.

“Once you have said those profits are immoral, then the public has a right to those profits,” she said.

Klein, who is known as a fierce critic of globalisation, acknowledged in a public statement that she was entering an “unlikely alliance” with the Vatican on the climate change issue, but said that the scale of the problem required all sorts of unique pairings.