VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ plea to make the state of the environment a central moral issue of our age has been greeted with applause from climate activists and a wide range of church, science and government leaders, but dismissive shrugs from those who doubt climate change.

In “Laudato Si,” Francis addressed “every living person on this planet,” urging them to hear “both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” about the damage from “compulsive consumerism,” waste and a single-minded pursuit of profit.

The pope’s “marching orders for advocacy,” as the head of the U.S. conference of bishops calls it, comes as the world nears a critical time for international climate change negotiations that start late this year in Paris.

Francis said he hoped his paper would lead both ordinary people in their daily lives and decision-makers at the Paris U.N. climate meetings to a wholesale change of mind and heart.

The document, released Thursday, put care for the environment at the center of Catholic social teaching, and, in lyrical but stark terms, reframed the discussion about global warming from the dry language of science to a broad question of ethics.

“Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years,” Francis writes. “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”

Many praised the encyclical: “It has the power to reshape the church and realign politics,” said Austen Ivereigh, author of “The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope.”

But some politically conservative Catholics criticized its economic analysis, and some U.S. Republican politicians said religion had no place in climate policy.