ATLANTA — Among the many missions of Pope Francis, one of the more prominent ones had to do with protecting the environment.

One parish in the Archdiocese of Atlanta has spent the past 10 years turning the Pope’s message into action.

The environmental conservation plan of action of the Archdiocese of Atlanta was inspired a letter written by Pope Francis in 2015.

The diocese has come up with a plan that has spread to dozens of other parishes around Metro Atlanta.

For decades, Catholic biologist Susan Varlamoff pressed to get others on board with stopping climate change.

“We have tried and tried with our fact and figures and pie charts to convince people to do something with climate change,” Varlamoff said.

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But it was 10 years ago, when her fight was forever changed.

Our faith calls for us, for creation to be good stewards of this planet that gives us life and supports us,” Kat Doyle with the Archdiocese of Atlanta said.

At St. John Neumann in Lilburn, they’ve turned that call into action.

“The trees and plants you see here are mostly native. We don’t use pesticides we know that will kill the good bugs as well as the bad bugs,” Varlamoff explained.

They’ve reduced their water usage and waste by 50%, monitoring their bill, and catching leaks quickly. And they’ve cut their energy bill by 30 percent: one way is by changing out the light bulbs throughout the church.

“The thing is, we’ve reduced the cost of running the church by $9,000 a year. It’s enough to help a poorer church by HVAC systems,” Varlamoff said.

St. John Neumann has multiple gardens, including a pollinator garden and another that grows food for a food pantry.

Their plan, now at many other Georgia catholic churches. For Susan, she’s convinced that the call from Pope Francis is the one person to make the largest impact on stopping climate change.

“With 1.4 billion Catholics, we could be change agents for climate change,” Varlamoff said.

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