As the Season of Creation draws to a close, I find myself pausing to notice how it invites us to renew our love and care for our world. This season also has been a time to return to a beloved poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Moved by the Holy Spirit, Maria Treviño uses a grassroots approach with the archdioceses of San Antonio, Austin and El Paso, Texas, to embrace the Laudato Si Action Platform.
Activists are fighting a copper mine planned for a site sacred to Apache people. "Religious freedom for Christians looks one way right now, and religious freedom for Native Americans another," said a Loretto Community co-member.
St. Benedict writes, "Let those who receive the clothing not complain about its color or coarseness, but accept what is given them." That's a hard teaching in a world like ours, where we're told to consume constantly.
Sr. Melania Nyamukuwa leads efforts to combat malnutrition-related ailments and promote economic entitlement for the most disadvantaged individuals of the area through individual and institutional garden projects.
We asked panelists: What can we learn through, from and for nature? What kind of threat does climate change pose to peace? What are you doing to change it? Responses reflect the living legacy of Pope Francis' love for creation.
Pope Francis was a prophet for the earth. It was through his teachings in "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home," that I came to see farming as a sacred calling. Laudato Si' also inspired collaboration here in Kenya.
The pope made ecological concern a cornerstone of his 12-year papacy and positioned care of creation as both a nonnegotiable pillar of the Christian faith and "essential to a life of virtue."
Catholic priests and nuns joined hundreds of activists demanding to stop a geothermal project on the predominantly Catholic Flores island in Indonesia, saying the project violates villagers' land rights and damages the environment.
