He means it. He took his official name from St. Francis of Assisi, well known for renunciation of enjoyment of human life while wallowing in veneration of 'God's creatures' around him:

"He [St. Francis] restrained his sensual appetites with such
strict discipline as that he would barely take what was necessary
to support life. For he was wont to say that it was difficult to
satisfy the needs of the body without yielding unto the
inclinations of the senses. Wherefore he would hardly, and but
seldom, allow himself cooked food when in health, and, when he
did allow it, he would either sprinkle it with ashes, or by
pouring water thereupon would as far as possible destroy its
savor and taste. Of his drinking of wine what shall I say, when
even of water he would scarce drink what he needed, while parched
with burning thirst? [Many of the saints drank water in
which laundry had been washed.] ... The bare ground for the most
part served as a couch unto his wearied body, and he would often
sleep sitting, with a log or a stone placed under his head, and,
clad in one tunic, he served the Lord in cold and nakedness."

[Saint Bonaventure, The Life of Saint Francis, The International
Society of Franciscan Studies, J.M. Dent and Co, Aldine House,
London, 1904, p45-6,
http://books.google.com/books?id=FAYN...
quoted in Jones, History of Western Philosophy, Vol 2, The Medieval
Mind, Harcourt Brace & World, 2nd ed, 1969, p.151.]

(This was quoted in Leonard Peikoff's History of Philosophy https://estore.aynrand.org/p/95/found.... )

This theme is all through the latest Papal Encyclical as the ideal for mankind. The call to suppress industry with viro controls on 'Greenhouse gases' is only one small part of it. LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS, ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/fran...

Such sincere ideological humility demanding that humanity be subservient to a mystic realm never stopped the Church from seeking to crush people who tried to use their own minds in support of human values for their own lives on earth.

It should not be surprising that the Pope and the viros of the Anti-Industrial Revolution are allied. Conservatives have been clamoring that the Pope has been captured by them, but it's the other way around. They have found their home in anti-civilization medieval nature worship mysticism of the Church.