The Vatican, the central administration for the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, has urged United States President Donald Trump to listen to “dissenting voices” and reconsider his position on climate change.

It also warned that him the United States risked losing its environmental protection leadership to China.

Reuters Newsagency reports Pope Francis has made defence of the environment a key plank of his papacy, strongly backing scientific opinion that global warming is caused mostly by human activity.

“This is a challenge for us,” said Cardinal Peter Turkson, the pope’s senior advisor on the environment, immigration and development, when asked about President Trump’s executive order dismantling Obama-era climate change regulations and his immigration policies.

“Fortunately, in the United States, there are dissenting voices, people who are against President Trump’s positions,” said Cardinal Turkson, who is from Ghana and was one of the driving forces behind the pope’s 2015 encyclical letter on environmental protection.

“This, for us, is a sign that little by little, other positions and political voices will emerge and so we hope that Trump himself will reconsider some of his decisions,” Cardinal Turkson told reporters at a breakfast meeting.

The pope and the Vatican, which has diplomatic relations with more than 180 countries and a permanent observer status at the United Nations, have strongly backed the UN sponsored international Paris Agreement reached in 2015 to curb world temperatures.

“We as a Church, are full of hope that President Trump’s positions will change,” Cardinal Turkson said.

Reuters reports he added that he hoped “the president realises that there sometimes can be dissonance between reality and things said during a campaign”.

After President Trump signed his executive order on Tuesday, keeping a campaign promise to bolster the US coal industry, nations led by China and the European Union rallied to support the Paris Agreement, which Mr Trump has threatened to abandon.

China, which had fought attempts by foreign governments to limit carbon emissions in the past, has become a strong proponent of efforts to halt global warming.

“While President Trump is moving in the opposite direction, there is another great power in the world, China, which is showing different signs, as if America is creating a vacuum that China is filling,” Cardinal Turkson said.

He said the Vatican hoped that positions by China, which is investing heavily in the export of clean energy products such as solar panels and wind turbines, “would provoke a re-consideration of the positions of some countries, in this case the United States.”

The Vatican was also “very worried” that the US budget, released on March 16, increased military spending at the expense of environmental protection, diplomacy and foreign aid, he added.

Cardinal Turkson said the Vatican invested much hope in the continuing opposition to President Trump’s policies on migration and climate change by the US Catholic Bishops Conference.