Attend Conference for “National 2023 Laudato Si’ and the US Catholic Church” | Virtual Sessions are available from 14 June 2023 through 25 July 2023
“Laudato Si’ and the U.S. Catholic Church: A Conference Series on Our Common Home” is a biennial series to equip and inspire Catholics to more deeply integrate Laudato Si’ and its climate change teaching into the U.S. Church.
The 2023 sessions will be virtual and open on June 14 with a keynote address from Ms. Christiana Figueres, a Catholic and former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) who brokered the Paris Agreement.
Throughout June and July, the series will host virtual 90-minute sessions on the goals of the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform. Each session will feature a scholar who describes the goal, a practitioner who outlines their work to achieve the goal, and a moderated Q&A.
Statement from Bishop Oscar Cantú
On this Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, I call your attention to an issue that has been a growing concern for the Church for decades and which Pope Francis has more recently highlighted, calling us to both reflection and action. This past June we marked the fourth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, in which he invited all persons to care for “our common home,” the planet God created for humanity to inhabit. Pope Francis expressed the need for an “ecological conversion” — that living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue, to a Christian life (LS 217). All Christian communities have an important role to play in ecological education (LS 214).
Laudato Si’ – Resources
Laudato Si’ Action Platform
Additional Information About Laudato Si
Environment – Laudato Si’
Click here for full webpage
Statement on World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation
Click here for full statement
Laudato Sí - 2020
Laudato Si’ | Statement from Bishop Oscar Cantú
The Diocese of San Jose
Celebrates the 5th Anniversary of Laudato Sí
“Let us join together for the care of our common home”
VIDEO: Pope Francis – Laudato Si’ Week
Pope Francis Invites us to Celebrate Laudato Sí Week
Reflection (Study)
- Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis Laudato Sí, 2015
- Letter from California Bishops, 2019 English | Spanish
- The Emmaus Walk – A Response to Living out Laudato Si (PowerPoint)
Communion (Teach)
Resources for Parishes
- Laudato Si – Schedule of Activities May16-24
- Laudato Si’ Study Guide
- Laudato Si’ 1-pager
- Liturgy and Preaching resources
- Querida Amazonia Study Guide
- Social Media Templates and Logos
- Laudato Si PDF Postcards | English & Spanish
- Spanish “Care for God’s Creation Discussion Guide“
Resources for Teachers and Catechists
- Laudato Si Video for Elementary School Children
- Laudato Si Video for High School Students
- Video children’s book Drop by Drop on access to water
Mission (Act)
- Activities: https://laudatosiweek.org/activities/
- Prayer: https://laudatosiweek.org/prayer/
Care for Creation
Season of Creation:
Earth on your Plate presentation
Laudato Si’:
From Vision to Practice
From Vision to Practice slides
Stewards of Our Common Home
SEASON OF CREATION 2022
Listen to the voice of creation
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many have become familiar with the concept of being muted in conversations. Many voices are muted in public discourse around climate change and the ethics of Earth-keeping.
These are voices of those who suffer the impacts of climate change. These are voices of people who hold generational wisdom about how to live gratefully within the limits of the land. These are voices of a diminishing diversity of more-than-human species. It is the voice of the Earth.
— seasonofcreation.org/
 Council Woman Maya Esparza meeting with Fr. Hugo Rojas at Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church to discuss environmental initiatives at the parish. |
 Our City Forest to begin planning the community tree planting event at Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church. |
 Environmental committee – environmental initiatives |
“Get Started at Your Parish!”
“Answer the call to ecological stewardship with awareness and education at your parish! Download the official discussion guide published by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and learn about:
- morality and spirituality
- integral ecology
- protecting human life
- global solidarity,
- and so much more
CATHOLIC CREATION CARE
Creation Care Kids | Problem Solvers
Stewards Charter – From the CA Conference of Catholic Bishops
Stewards of Our Common Home is committed to carrying out the vision of the CCC in the Diocese of San Jose. Please review the ministerial call on all the faithful explained by the CCC, and how you can make a difference in the DSJ!
https://www.cacatholic.org/common-home-summary
We Bishops are committed to helping fulfill Pope Francis’ teachings in Laudato Si’—calling the faithful to a commitment to solidarity, responsibility, and compassionate care of all humanity. Working together with our pastoral leaders and Catholic institutions, in communion with Christ and with one another in the Eucharist, we are pledged to bring the Pope’s message to people throughout California. To inspire care for our common home, we invite Californians to contemplate what we each can do through our various ‘ecological vocations’:
Pastoral leaders and Catholic institutions. Encourage the faithful to take the St. Francis Pledge to pray, act, and advocate for solutions to climate disruption. Integrate the messages of Laudato Si’ in our worship, and share practical tools of teaching that proclaim the encyclical’s themes. Examine opportunities to adopt practices that promote renewable energy, divestment from fossil fuels, water conservation, and environmental health and social initiatives with special attention to the needs of the poor and excluded.
Youth and young adults. Seek opportunities to pray in natural surroundings; initiate conversations with older adults about environmental protection and a more inclusive society. Consider how one’s career can be balanced with the call to care for our common home and to engage others in ways to help heal the earth.
Parents, teachers, and catechists. Help create an environmental consciousness and environmental literacy that promotes the principles of Laudato Si’ in every family’s lifestyle—including protecting nature, combatting poverty, and restoring dignity to the excluded. Ensure that environmental education in our learning institutions is based on both authentic scientific and ethical principles (LS 209-215). Expand opportunities for outdoor environmental education. Integrate themes from Laudato Si’ throughout all Catholic educational ministries and programs.
Public officials. Address environmental issues with an integral approach that cares for all of creation’s ecological, social, cultural, and economic dimensions. Enact policies that improve air quality, reduce polluting gases, strengthen water systems, protect precious ecosystems, and support the health of our citizens. Ensure that transition from a fossil-based economy does not burden the poor.
Leaders in business. Reflect thoughtfully on your vocation in the light of Laudato Si’s message regarding economics, finance, and business practices. Evaluate your business’ support of a transition toward sustainability, authentic human development, as well as the impact of commerce on the poor. Consider to what extent your business enterprise, its products, and its marketing meet genuine human needs and promotes the common good.
Those who work the land and care for it. Reflect on how your work can best balance economic production and environmental protection with attention to greater sustainability. With others, foster agricultural economies that are socially inclusive and address the needs of the hungry. Protect and educate the public about the value of ecosystems and how we can best live in a harmonious relationship with nature in the light of climate disruption, fires, and droughts.
Artists and innovators. Discover new ways to highlight the beauty of creation and inspire a culture of ecological and human care in the light of the moral applications of the Pope’s encyclical. Evaluate how your art, design and innovation shape human culture. Invite entrepreneurship in technological development that renews human culture and the common good.
The Bishops hope this consideration of the ways Laudato Si’ relates to our personal lives will inspire the faithful and all people of good will to pursue creative responses to Pope Francis’ call for a spiritual renewal, and that we will respond with life-giving measures as we move into the challenges we are facing in the 21st century.
“If we approach nature and the environment without…openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously.”
“Man is suddenly becoming aware that by an ill-considered exploitation of nature he risks destroying it and becoming in his turn the victim of this degradation. Not only is the material environment becoming a permanent menace – pollution and refuse, new illness and absolute destructive capacity – but the human framework is no longer under man’s control, thus creating an environment for tomorrow which may well be intolerable. This is a wide-ranging social problem which concerns the entire human family”
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