The encyclical was released on 18 June 2015 under the date of 24 May, five months before the United Nations climate conference in Paris, and the timing was not accidental. It was quoted extensively in the run up to that meeting, by delegations and by campaigners, and it gave religious bodies outside the Catholic Church a text to respond to. Orthodox, Anglican, Muslim and Jewish statements on the environment followed and several cite it directly.
It also drew sharp criticism, and the criticism split along two lines. Some argued that the scientific and economic sections lie outside the competence of the papal office and bind no one, a claim the encyclical partly anticipates by distinguishing what it teaches from the empirical judgements it relies on. Others, particularly in the United States, read its treatment of markets and of carbon trading as an intervention in policy rather than in morals.
Within Catholic institutional life its effects are measurable. Dioceses, religious orders and universities adopted divestment and energy policies with the document as their warrant, and in 2021 the Vatican launched a seven year Laudato Si' Action Platform to organise that work. Francis returned to the subject in 2023 with the apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum, which he presented as an update because, in his own assessment, the responses since 2015 had not been adequate.