JAMAICA ESTATES — Ellen Rhatigan has no doubt that Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’, which urges Catholics to respect the environment and show compassion to the less fortunate, will live on after his death. 

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Rhatigan, the provincial associate for mission for the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ — a religious order of priests known as the Passionists — works at Thomas Berry Place on the grounds of the order’s monastery in Jamaica Estates. 

All around her, she said, are signs that the Passionists take Laudato si’ seriously and live out its message. Thomas Berry Place, which opened in 2022 and is named after a Passionist priest, features a vegetable garden, solar panels, and a disdain for plastics. The grounds will soon be home to a beehive that will produce honey.

“I think it’s a beautiful alignment that Thomas Berry Place opened during Pope Francis’ pontificate,” Rhatigan said. “Both Thomas Berry and Pope Francis had this perfect voice, the voice that says we need to look at our interconnectedness — how everything is connected, from the way we treat the earth to the way that we treat each other.”

All over the Diocese of Brooklyn, there are Catholics living out Pope Francis’ message. 

In Bay Ridge, Thomas Hinchen, a parishioner of St. Andrew the Apostle Church, was composting in his backyard long before any city directive mandated it. He said it’s a way to respect the earth and heed the late pope’s call.

“I personally, and the people that I work with, which would include the Care for Creation Ministry at St. Andrew the Apostle, will keep on moving, inspired ever more by what Pope Francis has left us,” he said. “And we’re going to continue building the movement and reaching out to others and living out everything that he put forth in Laudato si’.”

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Made up of a dozen or so parishioners, the Care for Creation Ministry at St. Andrew the Apostle Church raises awareness about the importance of protecting Earth — exactly what Pope Francis called for when he published Laudato si’ (subtitled “On Care for Our Common Home”) on May 24, 2015. The encyclical touches on topics including climate change, consumerism, and economic development.

“The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know things can change,” Pope Francis wrote.

Environmentalists weren’t the only people who took the message to heart. Artists were also inspired.

With Laudato si’ in mind, an artist known as Delphinoto painted murals of Pope Francis on the walls outside of the Bay Ridge and Soho locations of Little Cupcake Bakeshop to spread the message. He also installed a community refrigerator on the sidewalk next to the Soho mural and stocked it with fresh fruits and vegetables.

“Laudato si’ is such an important document and philosophy,” Delphinoto said. “I asked myself, ‘How can I use art to raise awareness and inspire more people to be curious about it?’ 

“You have to connect the dots from the food we eat, to the energy we use, to how we provide housing, and all in a manner that respects God’s creation and is in line with Catholic social teaching.”

At Thomas Berry Place, Frank Lachapelle, program director for Reconnect NYC, a nonprofit that provides job training and manages the garden, said the vegetables grown there are donated to the less fortunate in the surrounding community in keeping with the spirit of Laudato si’.

Reconnect NYC also plans to use the garden as an educational tool to benefit the organization’s clientele of young men from marginalized neighborhoods. 

“We are working on a project to use our green space as a therapy space,” Lachapelle said. “We can help young men connect to the earth so they can understand how much they are a part of this world and how to care for it.”

Father Jim O’Shea, provincial for the Passionists Province of St. Paul of the Cross, described Laudato si’ as an important part of Pope Francis’ legacy and predicted that it will grow in importance as the years go by.

“The core of his idea, to turn toward caring for the earth and caring for one another, is not a part-time thing,” Father O’Shea said. “It is the core mission, and we just have to get better and better at it. 

“It’s not a diversion. It is the central work.”