Catholics and Protestants marked the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical, Laudato si’, with a message that although coronavirus is not directly linked to climate change, for people of faith, the key to overcoming both challenges lies in prioritizing the common good.
Over the next 10 years, Georgetown University will divest from fossil fuels – a move heralded by Catholic environmental activists as putting Pope Francis’s ecological vision into action.
On Dec. 11 top Vatican officials hailed Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, recently named TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year” for her environmental advocacy, as a “great witness” of Church teaching on care for creation and the human person.
A little more than four years after Pope Francis published one of his most provocative documents, not to mention perhaps his most political, in the form of his eco-encyclical Laudato Si’, the pontiff appears increasingly disappointed in the way the environmental manifesto been received.
As impeachment hearings divided the nation Wednesday, several blocks away a blockbuster line-up of Catholic thinkers sought to harness the Church’s social teachings to make sense of increasing political and cultural volatility while, at the same time, wrestling with public witness in a fractured church.
While the Amazon region has been the focus of this month’s Vatican meeting of bishops, one of the Americans taking part says he hopes the gathering’s reverberations will be felt in the United States.
One Venezuelan prelate taking part in the current Synod of Bishops on the Amazon says people back home have a creative alternative for coping with chronic priest shortages, beyond the much-discussed idea of married clergy to serve isolated rural communities.
Lesser known – but also enjoying Vatican backing and U.N. support – is the work of 29- year-old, Molly Burhans, who while initially discerning to be a nun, discovered that the Catholic Church is one of the world’s largest landowners and is now seeking to steward such property – and the data that goes with it – for the common good.
Thousands of Catholics joined in climate strikes on Friday, following the lead of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist who ignited the global movement, but also that of 82-year-old Pope Francis who has made environmental concerns a centerpiece of his papacy.
Ahead of October’s upcoming Rome summit on the Amazon region, one stateside organization is hoping the legacy of a lesser-known saint – Kateri Tekakwitha – may help Catholics in the United States realize the significance of indigenous people for the Church.
