At the Vatican, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was greeted by Pope Francis Wednesday, as she continues to lead a campaign to press European leaders to act urgently on climate change. Last August, Thunberg began a series of school strikes on the climate outside the Swedish parliament, which quickly grew from a quiet, one-person weekly vigil to an international protest movement involving hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. On Tuesday, Thunberg addressed the European Parliament, where she urged lawmakers to respond as urgently to climate change as they did when much of Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral burned on Monday.

Greta Thunberg: “Yesterday, the world watched with despair and enormous sorrow how the Notre-Dame burnt in Paris. Some buildings are more than just buildings. But the Notre-Dame will be rebuilt. I hope that its foundations are strong. I hope that our foundations are even stronger, but I fear they are not.”