The Season of Creation, convoked by the Pope, has come to an end with three relevant fruits.
Last Monday, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, marked the end of the third edition of the Season of Creation convoked by Pope Francis. The celebration, which began in early September with the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, is a gathering of Christians from all over the world to pray for and protect the environment, which they consider to be God’s creation.
This new edition comes in a year of important meetings of world leaders, such as the United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP26), which will bring together approximately 200 leaders to accelerate actions to implement the Paris Agreement.
First fruit: ecumenical declaration between the Pope and two other Christian leaders
Pope Francis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a joint message for the future of the planet. Released in early September, they warned that “We stand before a harsh justice: biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and climate change are the inevitable consequences of our actions” and added, “but we also face a profound injustice: the people bearing the most catastrophic consequences of these abuses are the poorest on the planet and have been the least responsible for causing them”.
Second fruit: a meeting of scientists at the Vatican
To mark the end of this Season of Creation, last Monday an event entitled “Faith and Science: Towards COP26” was organized by the embassies of the United Kingdom and Italy to the Holy See, where leaders and scholars from various religious traditions made an appeal to the leaders who will participate in the Conference of the Parties. The document that Pope Francis delivered to Alok Kumar Sharma, President-designate of COP26, and to the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Luigi Di Maio, presents, among other things, various avenues of education and training to be developed in favor of the care of the common home.
Third fruit: Thousands of Catholics petition the United Nations
Thousands of Catholics around the world have joined the Healthy Planet, Healthy People petition promoted by the Laudato Si Movement and over 300 organizations through thecatholicpetition.org website. This initiative aims to accompany Pope Francis in his call to world leaders, who will take part of COP26, for urgent and ambitious measures on the ecological crisis we are currently experiencing. Lorna Gold, president of Laudato Si Movement, explained that “current levels of political ambition on the ecological emergency we face are inadequate unless we reduce emissions by 50% globally staying below 1.5°C will be practically impossible.” And in relation to biodiversity, he added “recent evidence suggests that 50% global conservation needs to be achieved for nature to play its potential role in achieving climate goals.”
“Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ invited us to take care of our common home, and as we know our common home is crumbling down” expressed Father Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, director of the Vatican’s Office of Ecology and Creation. He warned that, as the IPCC report reflects, “we have just less than a decade to remain within the catastrophic limit of 1.5°C. We’re losing species at unprecedented rates. Of 7 billion species, one billion species could go extinct. time is running out. It is time for Catholics to come together, to raise our prophetic voice for the defense of God’s creation”.
On behalf of the Dicastery for Human Development, father Joshtrom invites to sign the petition saying “let us make sure that we have a just and urgent transition in which we defend and respect the rights especially of the poor, of indigenous communities, of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters”.
About Laudato Si Movement
Laudato Si Movement was born in 2015 as a fruit of the publication of Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si, and the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. Today this catholic global movement is made up of more than 800 organizations and thousands of animators around the world, who share a mission to inspire and mobilize the Catholic community to care for our common home and achieve climate and ecological justice.
Learn more at thecatholicpetition.org
