CT News
May 27, 2026 : Pope Leo XIV travelled to Acerra on Saturday, bringing closeness and a message of moral clarity, as well as practical encouragement to a community that has long suffered from environmental degradation and organised criminality.
Acerra, in the southern Italian Campania region, is part of a deeply scarred territory, devastated by environmental degradation due to illegal rubbish dumping and the unchecked burning of toxic waste.
The town of 65,000 residents is at the heart of the so-called “Terra dei Fuochi”. or 'Land of Fires', a territory also known as "The Triangle of Death", which for the past 20 years has been suffocated by toxic fires burning the contaminated land. This has given rise to a health crisis in which hundreds of people, including many children, have developed rare forms of cancer, without help from the institutions, which have been accused of incompetence and corruption.
Recalling the late Pope Francis' landmark encyclical Laudato sì, Pope Leo did not shy away from addressing the environmental emergency in the area, and insisted on the need for a shared moral responsibility: breaking the cycle of silence, strengthening lawful enterprise, and ensuring that clean-up efforts are thorough, transparent, and scientifically credible.
He reiterated that creation is a gift entrusted to our care, and urged collaboration between Church communities, public institutions, universities, and honest businesses to monitor, remediate, and rebuild, so that the land may again breathe and families may remain rooted in dignity.
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