As Pope Francis prepares for his second visit to Latin America since assuming his position as leader of the Catholic Church, social movements are also preparing for their second meeting with the pontiff to address social issues including climate change and inequality.

Pope Francis will begin his week-long trip in Ecuador, where he has a meeting with civil society groups in Quito, before ending his tour in Paraguay, where he has confirmed a meeting with leaders from the LGBTI community. In between these stops, Pope Francis will arrive in the Andean nation of Bolivia, where his agenda includes participation in the second World Meeting of Social Movements. The gathering will be attended by some 1,500 activists from around the world.

The meeting, which will take place from July 7-9 in the Bolivian City of Santa Cruz, is expected to build on the momentum gained during the previous encounter held last year in the Vatican, where participants issued a joint declaration denouncing inequality, vowing to struggle against labor, environmental and economic injustices.

This year’s conference includes three days of meetings, reports, and debates where delegates from over 34 countries will share experiences, facts, ideas and proposals to address the problems affecting the poor of the earth.

Additionally, the event will provide space for participants to address issues such as climate change, poverty land, housing and work within the context of social exclusion.

On several occasions since assuming his position as leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has not only spoken about the rights of the poor and underprivileged, but has also urged world leaders to examine the underlying and structural causes of poverty and inequality.

“The scandal of poverty cannot be addressed by promoting strategies of containment that only tranquilize and convert the poor into domesticated and inoffensive beings,” the Pontiff stated during the first Vatican-sponsored World Meeting of Popular Movements.

Among those attending the upcoming conference, which will be attended by João Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement, the largest social movement in Brazil. The group has long been influenced by liberation theology – a movement that has a radical, left-wing interpretation of Christianity and the role of the Church – and has, on various occasions, praised the Pope’s display of solidarity with grassroots social movements.

“In all the issues on which he has spoken out – the war in Syria, hunger, the migration of Africans to Europe, unemployment, homeless people, etc. – he has always spoken clearly and strongly, without fear of naming the guilty, abandoning the traditional diplomatic discourse that justified the position of the Vatican being always on the side of the powerful and international entities,” Stedile wrote in a recent article.

While Francis's individual actions cannot be seen to represent a wholescale change in the Catholic Church’s conservative doctrine and practices, they are nonetheless remarkable in so far as they do mark a shift from the discourse and actions of previous popes.

In June, the pontiff made waves by tackling the issue of climate change in his encyclical, acknowledging that “a very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system” while urging “decisive action.”

Moreover, from stressing the importance of tackling the issue of the environment, Francis went on to criticize capitalism as a factor in climate change. “Once more, we need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals,” he argued.

In line with this particular take on climate change, the pontiff has included renowned left-wing author and activist Naomi Klein to be on his climate change advisory team. Klein latest best-seller, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, is precisely an anti-capitalist critique of climate change and the barriers to action.

Right-wing pundits and groups have increasingly been commenting on the Pope’s progressive stances, with some going as far as to accuse him of being a Marxist.

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While Pope Francis has denied affiliations to the liberation theology movement, Latin America’s first ever Pope has undoubtedly sought to change the Church's image, with greater emphasis on tolerance, inclusion and social justice. Social movements of the region are increasingly recognizing those efforts, and are taking advantage of the opportunity created by having the influential ally on their side.