A rare document that cites the Divine Comedy, the works of Thomas Aquinas and the Basel Convention on hazardous waste appeared this week, Laudato Si (Praise Be), the papal encyclical on climate change.

As a former Catholic who is still angry at the church on a number of fronts, I was prepared to pick holes in Pope Francis's lengthy treatise, but instead it appeared to be awestruck.

The document states that at first we have to consider the profound weirdness of the situation in which they are in. There a situation founded on the mystical precepts of virgin birth and transubstantiation, trying to prove to disbelievers the very science that has been staring us in the eye for decades.

The Catholic Church, which still clings to miracles and exorcism and continues to turn mortals into saints, also acknowledges that climate change is man-made, empirically proven, and is devastating to the world.

And perhaps be is obliged to no one being the Pope and all there is a remarkable and quite refreshing lack of hedging or equivocation in Laudato Si.

It is said that world is imperiled and the poor especially are imperiled owing to the greed and obliviousness of the rest. All things are connected, even if we are willfully blind to the connections.

"Things are now reaching a breaking point, due to the rapid pace of change and degradation; these are evident in large-scale natural disasters as well as social and even financial crises, for the world's problems cannot be analyzed or explained in isolation", it stated.

There has been a hole in the climate change argument i. e. a hole of grandeur, or compelling narrative, or moral authority. The densely packed reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are vital but they don't stir the heart.

No UN report will ever say, as the papal encyclical does, that rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.