We establish a general sufficient condition for a sequence of Galton–Watson branching processes in varying environments to converge weakly. This condition extends previ- ous results by allowing offspring distributions to have infinite variance. Our assumptions are stated in terms of pointwise convergence of a triplet of two real- valued functions and a measure. The limiting process is characterized by a backwards integro-differential equation satisfied by its Laplace exponent, which generalizes the branching equation satisfied by continuous state branching processes. Several examples are discussed, namely branching processes in random environment, Feller diffusion in varying environments and branching processes with catastrophes.