Origin, Impact and Prospects

Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, sdb

Former Coordinator of ‘Ecology & Creation’, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development &
Chair of Philosophy of Science, Salesian Pontifical University

When Pope Francis took the name of Saint Francis of Assisi, it was widely expected that his papacy would be a turning point in the area of creation care. Pope Francis did not disappoint. Like his saintly namesake, whose conversion began when he heard the voice of the Crucified Lord in the dilapidated chapel of San Damiano saying, “Francis, go and repair my house, which, as you see, is falling into ruin”, Pope Francis set out in Laudato Si’ to repair a planetary home “falling into serious disrepair” (Laudato Si’, 61).

Hardly a fortnight after the publication of Laudato Si’ on 18th June 2015, Dale Jamieson of New York University described it as “the most important environmental text of the twenty-first century.” Looking back at the impact of Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical letter on the care for our common home ten years after its publication, Jamieson’s prophetic statement appears to have come true. Laudato Si’ has had a remarkable impact on the way people look at and care for our planetary home. One notable contribution of the encyclical in the international arena was its role in facilitating the signing of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Pope Francis himself admitted that he timed the publication of the encyclical to influence the outcome of the crucial United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Paris in December 2015, following the disastrous failure of the Copenhagen summit in 2009. As Pope Francis told journalists accompanying him on his flight from Sri Lanka to the Philippines on 16th January 2015, he wanted the encyclical out early enough so “that there is some time between the publication of the encyclical and the meeting in Paris” to help bolster the delegates to “be more courageous”. COP15 delivered the Paris Agreement, which has been widely acknowledged as being due in no small part to the timely publication of Laudato Si’, beginning with then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Laudato Si’ has also had a ripple effect within the interfaith community. In 2015 alone, it inspired the Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis, the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, the Buddhist Climate Change Statement to World Leaders and Bhumi Devi Ki Jai! A Hindu Declaration on Climate Change.

Laudato Si’ brought about a huge paradigm shift at least on two fronts. Firstly, it broadened the scope of our discussions about the ecological crisis. Laudato Si’ is not just any ‘environmental’ document. Significantly, the encyclical carries the subtitle “On Care for Our Common Home”. Pope Francis reminded the world that we are not merely dealing with environmental problems, but with a crisis affecting our common home. As Francis notes, we have inflicted great harm on our common home “by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her”, and “she ‘groans in travail’ (Rom 8:22)” (Laudato Si’, 2). The encyclical has had a significant impact on the world’s collective imagination precisely because it captures the dramatic urgency of our current historical moment, namely the threat to our common home.

A second paradigm shift brought about by Laudato Si’ is evident in Pope Francis’s new language of integral ecology. He reminds us that “human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself” (Laudato Si’, 66). In the spirit of integral ecology, Laudato Si’ understands the ecological crisis as “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (Laudato Si’, 49, italics as in the original). The integral ecological lens helps Pope Francis to diagnose and identify the multiple roots of the precarious state of our common home, which he groups under the umbrella of the reigning technocratic economic paradigm. In the spirit of integral ecology, Francis calls for a unified response involving everyone, and combining politics and economics, regional and international collaboration, education and religion, as well as ecological conversion and spirituality.

The mission of caring for our common home is more important than ever today, as the cries of the Earth, the poor and the children have only grown louder. As Pope Francis himself acknowledged in the 2023 apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum, “the situation is now even more pressing” (Laudate Deum, 4). He wrote:

Eight years have passed since I published the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, when I wanted to share with all of you, my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet, my heartfelt concerns about the care of our common home. Yet, with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point. (Laudate Deum, 2)

The challenge is huge. As Pope Francis has often said, “we have inherited a garden from the Creator, we must not leave a desert to our children.” Providence has blessed us with Pope Leo, a pastor who has experienced the ecological challenges and socio-economic crises of our time first-hand in Peru and around the world. At a 2024 Vatican conference on ecological challenges, Cardinal Prevost affirmed that the time had come to move “from words to action.” Brother Leo was extremely close to St. Francis of Assisi, and deeply shared the Saint’s love for the poor and for all creatures. As Saint Francis’s close friend and scribe, Brother Leo also played a role in preserving the saint’s teachings and writings, including the ‘Canticle of Creatures’, which celebrates the beauty and interconnectedness of all creation. Just as Brother Leo inherited and bequeathed Brother Francis’s spiritual patrimony to us, we pray that Pope Leo may inherit and pass on Pope Francis’s own concern for, and remarkable leadership in, creation care to the Church and the world. The stakes could not be higher as we live in an era of unprecedented planetary emergency.