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Pope Francis to release second Laudato Si’ on Oct. 4

August 30, 2023 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Francis delivers a Laudato Si’ video message May 24, 2021. / Screenshot

Vatican City, Aug 30, 2023 / 08:47 am (CNA).

Pope Francis said Wednesday he will release a follow-up environmental document to the 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ on Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.

Speaking at the end of his general audience Aug. 30, the pope said he plans “to publish an exhortation, a second Laudato Sì’,” at the end of a Vatican-supported ecumenical initiative that will run Sept. 1–Oct. 4.

The Season of Creation will begin, Pope Francis said, on Sept. 1, which is the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. This year’s theme is “Let Justice and Peace Flow.”

“Let us join our Christian brothers and sisters in the commitment to care for creation as a sacred gift from the Creator,” Francis urged at his public audience.

“It is necessary to stand with the victims of environmental and climate injustice, striving to end the senseless war on our common home, which is a terrible world war,” he added. “I urge all of you to work and pray for it to abound with life once again.”

Pope Francis announced last week that he is writing a second part to his 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Si’.

The pope said with this new writing he is updating Laudato Si’ to cover current issues.

The Holy See Press Office director, Matteo Bruni, confirmed to CNA on Aug. 21 that “the pope is working on a letter updating Laudato Si’ with regard to the recent environmental crises.”

Laudato Si’ is the second of three encyclicals published in Pope Francis’ pontificate thus far. It was released in June 2015.

The theme of the encyclical, which means “Praise be to you,” is human ecology, a phrase first used by Pope Benedict XVI. The document addresses issues such as climate change, care for the environment, and the defense of human life and dignity. 

Pope Francis said Aug. 30 that the second part to Laudato Si’ would be the kind of papal document known as an “exhortation.”

Francis has so far published five apostolic exhortations during his pontificate, including Evangelii Gaudium and Amoris Laetitia.

The feast of St. Francis of Assisi was also the date in 2020 that Pope Francis chose to release his most recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, about fraternity and social friendship.

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Pope Francis writing a second environmental document after Laudato si’

August 21, 2023 Catholic News Agency 15
Pope Francis presides over a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on July 23, 2023, for the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly. / Pablo Esparza/EWTN

Vatican City, Aug 21, 2023 / 03:45 am (CNA).

Pope Francis announced during an audience with lawyers Monday that he is writing a second part to his 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato si’.

The pope said with this new writing he is updating Laudato si’ to cover current issues.

He made the statement on the morning of Aug. 21, at the end of a speech to lawyers from the Council of Europe member states that signed the Vienna Declaration on the Support of the Rule of Law in 2022.

Pope Francis told the lawyers he is sensitive to their care for the common home and commitment to the development of regulatory frameworks for environmental protection.

“We must never forget that the younger generations are entitled to receive from us a beautiful and livable world, and that this invests us with grave duties towards the creation we have received from God’s generous hands,” he said.

Laudato si’ is the second of three encyclicals published in Pope Francis’ pontificate thus far. It was released in June 2015.

The title, which means “Praise be to you,” was taken from St. Francis of Assisi’s medieval Italian prayer “Canticle of the Sun,” which praises God through elements of creation like Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and “our Sister Mother Earth.”

The theme of the encyclical is human ecology, a phrase first used by Pope Benedict XVI. The document addresses issues such as climate change, care for the environment, and the defense of human life and dignity.

In Laudato si’, Francis wrote that human ecology implies the profound reality of “the relationship between human life and the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature and is necessary for the creation of a more dignified environment.”

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Pope Francis launches 7-year Laudato si’ action plan

May 25, 2021 Catholic News Agency 7
Pope Francis delivers Laudato si’ video message May 24, 2021 / Screenshot

Vatican City, May 25, 2021 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Pope Francis launched Tuesday the Vatican’s seven-year Laudato si’ action plan to implement environmental sustainability in different sectors of the Church from religious orders to Catholic schools and hospitals.

“We need a new ecological approach that can transform our way of dwelling in the world, our styles of life, our relationship with the resources of the Earth and, in general, our way of looking at humanity and of living life,” Pope Francis said in a video message May 24.

The pope marked the end of the year celebrating the fifth anniversary of his environmental encyclical Laudato si’ with the message announcing the initiative.

He said that the year would be followed immediately by a seven-year plan known as the Laudato si’ Action Platform.

The Laudato si’ Action Platform will focus on seven sectors: families, parishes, schools, hospitals, businesses, organizations, and religious orders.

The pope explained that the action plan also has seven goals: the response to the cry of the earth, the response to the cry of the poor, ecological economics, adoption of simple lifestyles, ecological education, ecological spirituality, and community involvement.

“Our selfishness, our indifference and our irresponsible ways are threatening the future of our children,” Pope Francis said.

“I therefore renew my appeal: let us take care of our mother Earth … let us overcome the temptation of selfishness that makes us predators of resources, let us cultivate respect for the gifts of the Earth and creation, let us inaugurate a lifestyle and a society that is finally eco-sustainable.”

“We have the opportunity to prepare a better tomorrow for all. From God’s hands we have received a garden, we cannot leave a desert to our children,” he added.

Vatican press conference on Laudato Si' Action Platform / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican press conference on Laudato Si’ Action Platform / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Cardinal Peter Turkson, the prefect for the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, said at a press conference May 24 that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many of the Vatican’s planned events, conferences, and celebrations for the Laudato Si’ year, but expressed gratitude to the parishes and associations that organized local events.

In particular, the cardinal commended Catholics in Bangladesh for planting 700,000 trees over the course of the past year.

Fr. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, who leads the Ecology and Creation section of the Vatican dicastery, stressed that the Laudato Si’ Action Platform can only be accomplished in partnership with “the synodal path that Pope Francis is proposing to the entire Church.”

“Integral ecology demands that we journey together on this mission,” he said.

Kureethadam explained that the first year of the initiative will be dedicated to “drawing up concrete action plans” following by “five years of concrete action” with the final year dedicated to “praise and thank God.”

Fr. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam speaks at Vatican press conference May 24, 2021 / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Fr. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam speaks at Vatican press conference May 24, 2021 / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

In addition to the Vatican dicastery, Eco-Jesuit, the Pan-Amazonian Church Network (REPAM), the Global Catholic Climate Movement, the Union of Religious Superiors in Rome, and other Catholic groups are involved with the organization of the seven years of programming.

“On a journey that will last for seven years, we will let ourselves be guided by the seven aims of Laudato si’, which will show us the direction while we pursue the vision of integral ecology,” Pope Francis said.

“There is hope. We can all collaborate, each one with his own culture and experience, each one with her own initiatives and capacities, so that our mother Earth may be restored to her original beauty and creation may once again shine according to God’s plan.”


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Laudato si’ Week recalls encyclical’s sixth anniversary

May 20, 2021 Catholic News Agency 0
L’Osservatore Romano.

Vatican City, May 20, 2021 / 11:29 am (CNA).

The Vatican is observing Laudato si’ Week to mark the sixth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on care for our common home. The week includes an online climate summit.

 “The Laudato si’ action platform will be launched at the end of this week that offers the Church and all religious bodies a huge range of activities that they can join in order to move further away from fossil fuels,” Lindlyn Moma, Director of Advocacy for the Global Catholic Climate Movement, said during day three of the summit.

Father Augusto Zampini, adjunct secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, is overseeing the May 16-25 Laudato si’ Week.

Fr. Zampini told Crux May 17 he hopes the Laudato si’ action plan will create “a massive movement” of organizations throughout society and the Church. 

“The idea is that everyone commits to the seven Laudato Si resolutions, which are easy,” he said.

A conversation during the summit’s third day, Laudato Si Dialogue on Energy and Fossil Fuels: Global Catholic Divestment Drumbeat, featured six panelists discussing fossil fuels and plans for reduction in their use.

Day three of the summit brought in 1,100 views on YouTube and nearly 240 on Facebook. The previous day, the summit attracted 3,000 viewers on YouTube and 500 on Facebook. On the first day, the summit brought 4,000 views on YouTube, and almost 560 on Facebook.  

The summit will continue to feature discussions of the pope’s call for ecological responsibility in the face of climate change. 

Laudato si’ Week is the conclusion of a year-long observance of the fifth anniversary of the encyclical. The year has included numerous activities to encourage the others.

In June 2020 the Vatican encouraged Catholics to put their faith into action to promote integral ecology and care of creation with the release of a 200-page document. 

The introduction of On the Journey for Care of the Common Home said, “the intention is to offer an orientation to the action of Catholics (but not only) in the secular dimension and to ask every Christian to examine their own behavior, also in everyday life…”

During the launch of the Laudato si’ year in May 2020, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development commented that five years from Pope Francis’ signing of the document, the “encyclical appears ever more relevant.”

“We hope that the anniversary year and the ensuing decade will indeed be a time of grace, a true Kairos experience and ‘Jubilee’ time for the Earth, and for humanity, and for all God’s creatures,” the dicastery said at the time.


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Hearing ‘cry of the poor’ is key message of ‘Laudato si’, Cardinal Turkson says

May 29, 2020 CNA Daily News 3

Washington D.C., May 29, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Peter Turkson has said that the principle of “non-violence” extends beyond opposing physical violence, and must include the protection human rights from exploitation.

Acknowledging the week’s protests and rioting in Minneapolis, the Vatican cardinal made the comments during an event to mark five years since the promulgation of the papal encyclical Laudato si’.

“There’s a lot of talk within the same church about Christian non-violence,” said Cardinal Turkson, head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, making reference to the social unrest in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.

“Christian non-violence is not only when you [do not] hold a gun or a knife to the throat of somebody. Christian non-violence is also when you do not do violence to people’s dignity, people’s rights,” he said.

When the conditions necessary for human flourishing are not met in society, then the “cry of the poor” can be heard, he said, pointing to prayers for victims of racism and injustice in the wake of the Minneapolis riots.  

Cardinal Turkson made his remarks as he led an online panel discussion on Friday. The event “Laudato Si After Five Years: Hearing the Cry of the Earth and the Cry of the Poor” was co-sponsored by the Vatican and Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life.

Kim Daniels, associate director of the initiative, began Friday’s event with a prayer for George Floyd “and all those who suffer from acts of racism and injustice,” after a “tragic week” where large riots and protests had occurred in Minneapolis, New York, and other cities in the U.S. Daniels was appointed by Pope Francis to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication in 2016.

The protests followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Monday after a police officer was seen kneeling on his neck for several minutes while arresting him. Floyd, moaning and crying out in apparent pain, said repeatedly that he could not breathe in a video of the incident taken by bystanders. 

Floyd appeared unconscious several minutes into the video, and according to the police department was later taken to a hospital where he died. Four police officers involved in Floyd’s arrest were fired from the department, and one was arrested on Friday and charged with murder and manslaughter.

Noting the prayer for Floyd and other victims of racism and injustice at the beginning of Friday’s event, Turkson said that “it’s just a cry for people to recognize that every human being requires a minimum of social conditions to enable him to live, and live successfully and happily.”

Both human beings and the environment need to be cared for, he said, and when they are not “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” is heard—a key message of Laudato si’.

The “cry of the poor” occurs because “what they need to constitute their thriving, prosperous environment, is denied them,” the cardinal said. “And that’s why we talk about justice.”

The human and economic toll of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has also taught ecological lessons, he said. 

Turkson pointed out that lockdown conditions have resulted in emissions drops, causing cleaner air in India and China, but the sudden unemployment of millions of people as a result of the economic shutdown challenges the very sustainability of the current economic system.

Cardinal Turkson said that Pope Francis’ letter was the “result of a lot of teaching” from previous popes.

Pope St. Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum progressio stressed care for nature and established ecology as “a set of conditions which constitute an environment which enables something to thrive,” Turkson said, while Pope St. John Paul II talked about human ecology and the environment of moral conditions which one needs to live well, and Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate taught that “society itself also has an environment that needs to be respected.”

Integral ecology, he said, is “ecology of nature, ecology of the human person, ecology of society, ecology of peace.”

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Laudato si’: Atlanta archdiocese’s sustainability efforts 5 years on

May 22, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Denver Newsroom, May 22, 2020 / 04:58 pm (CNA).- Susan Varlamoff, a retired biologist and parishioner at St. John Neumann Catholic Church, was in 2015 serving as director of the Office of Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia, when she heard that Pope Francis was working on an encyclical on the environment.

Varlamoff told CNA that working for a cleaner environment has been a personal mission for her for many years, in part because her family suffered the negative effects of living near a toxic landfill when she was a child. 

“I’ve been on the forefront of this, doing so much in my own home, but to actually see the Catholic Church embrace this and the pope, who’s a trained chemist, come out with an environmental encyclical was absolutely thrilling,” she told CNA.

Varlamoff approached her archbishop at the time— Wilton Gregory, now Archbishop of Washington— to see if she could somehow offer her scientific expertise to the pope.

Gregory laughed and said the pope likely had all the scientific help he needed— but, he said, the archdiocese would need its own action plan.

Valamoff began collaborating with climate scientists and other professionals at the University of Georgia, along with several interreligious groups who also were working on addressing environmental issues, to begin the process of creating the action plan. Before they could do much, Laudato si’ was promulgated.

Valamoff said when she read the encyclical, it exceeded her expectations. It was clear to her that Pope Francis had received good input from his scientific advisors, she said.

“What I was surprised about the document was that it addressed many different environmental issues from biodiversity, energy, water, and then he talked about the unfair way that the environmental issues are affecting the poor. They’re taking a disproportionate share of the burden, of these environmental issues,” Varlamoff said.

Laudato si’ was released in May 2015. By November, Susan and her team presented a 48-page, peer-reviewed action plan to the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

The plan suggests ten areas where Catholics in Atlanta can make changes to make their homes— or their parishes— more eco-friendly, from energy efficiency and recycling to sustainable landscaping and water conservation.

Each section includes a few concrete suggestions that vary in time commitment, cost, and resources. For example, if you want to conserve water, you can check your toilet for slow leaks. Or, if you want to do something bigger, you can install a drip irrigation system in your yard.

The archdiocese presented the plan in 2016, and sent a copy to every parish.

Now, four years on, there are at least 60 or 70 parishes throughout the archdiocese that have a sustainability ministry, Varlamoff said.

One of the first things Varlamoff did at her parish was to replace styrofoam and disposable dishes at events with actual dishes, which reduced waste after large events.

In addition, after an energy audit, the parish replaced all its light bulbs, and is transforming its campus by planting native plants and trees.

She said for the ministries to work well, each parish needs a point person.

“They need somebody to lead the effort, to inspire the people to do this work, and to bring together experts and interested people to move the parishioners and to move the pastor and facilities manager and parish council to do this work,” she said.

At the beginning of this year, the Atlanta archdiocese started the Laudato Si Initiative, meant to expand on what the parish teams were already doing under the action plan.

The archdiocese also hired two Laudato si’ coordinators, including a sustainability strategist, in February.

Leonard Robinson, the sustainability strategist, has some 45 years experience in the field and previously worked with several California governors at the California Environmental Protection Agency.

He said not every parish in Atlanta has embraced the call for greater sustainability, partly because it simply was something new for many of them.

“It’s a slight change, but it’s not the change people expect. A lot of the parishes said, ‘Okay, we’re overburdened. We’ve got all these ministries we’ve got doing this, this and this. We don’t have time for one more thing’,” Robinson told CNA.

“Well, I explained that this one more thing it’s not really a thing, we want to weave sustainability in all walks of Catholic life, education, ministry, and everything else. So if you’re open to it, you won’t even notice that it’s extra work. You might find in some cases there’s less, and you’ll have more resources to do other things.”

In some cases, the best way to approach parishes or individuals is not to even mention the phrases “climate change” or “sustainability.”

“Let’s say energy efficiency. Let’s say water conservation. Let’s say sustainable landscapes. Let’s say extra resources for other ministries, because you’re saving energy, and these things when you save them, it does save you money, but it’s not about money, it’s maximizing the things that you do to enforce other ministries.”

Robinson said the Laudato Si Action Plan was a great starting point, a “roadmap” for his work at the archdiocese.

“That was one of the attractions for my job. I don’t have to start from zero, I’ve got this roadmap. All I have to do is institute that and weave that into every part of Catholic life,” he said.

Varmaloff commented: “The Pope is so well respected as a moral leader in the world…why shouldn’t Catholic churches be demonstration sites for energy efficiency, water efficiency, growing food sustainably? Why not recycling? There’s no reason why the Catholic church can’t lead the way.”

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