Catholic Climate Covenant Updates

ACTION OF THE MONTH

Register for this Summer’s virtual conference

The 2023 Laudato Si’ and the U.S. Catholic Church is almost here! Register free today if you haven't already.

The conference opens next Wednesday, June 14 at 8 pm Eastern with a keynote address from Ms. Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) who brokered the Paris Agreement.  

The biennial conference series co-sponsored by Creighton University and Catholic Climate Covenant. Eight virtual, 90-minute sessions will be held about once a week between June 14-July 25, with an awards ceremony honoring Catholic environmental champions to follow on July 27. 

Can’t attend all the sessions? No worries! You can register now for free, and you will receive a link for access to all the sessions -- you choose which sessions to attend. If you miss any sessions a recording will be sent to you. 

Here is the full schedule of the LSUS Conference, which this year aims to provide practical guidance and trainings on each of Laudato Si’ Action Platform’s seven goals. Each session will focus on one of the goals and feature scholars who describe the theological underpinnings of the goal, followed by practitioners who discuss their work to achieve the goal, and a moderated Q&A. The sessions will be in English with available Spanish interpretation. 

Please plan to join us!

Check out our new ecology curriculum for young adults

We are pleased to share that Wholemakers, our new ecology curriculum for young adults, is now available for free download and use.

Wholemakers is a 10-session curriculum on integral ecology for use in young adult ministry. Created by and for young adults, it weaves together climate science with insights from Catholic tradition, and can be used in high schools, college campuses, and small groups.

It was created and vetted by a consortium of young adults, theologians, and experts from Catholic Climate Covenant, Maryknoll, and the USCCB among other institutions. It was piloted and refined in 13 communities including the University of Notre Dame, the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese Care for Creation Team, and the Academy of Our Lady High School in Los Angeles.

Joining Encounter, our national campaign for climate solutions

Encounter for Our Common Home is an ongoing national campaign that brings together Catholics across the country to urge our U.S. Senators to enact authentic solutions to the climate crisis. These virtual and in-person encounters with our Senators come from the foundation of our Catholic faith and in accordance with the Laudato Si’ Action Platform.

JOIN THE ENCOUNTER CAMPAIGN!

We are a coalition of U.S. Catholic groups working together for our Common Home. Join Catholic Climate Covenant and our U.S. Catholic partners for this national campaign for climate solutions. This is an advocacy effort in concert with the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform (LSAP) activities in the United States.

Thank you for contributing to our Spring fundraising campaign!

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our spring fundraising campaign, “Together For Our Common Home.” With your contribution, Catholic Climate Covenant will shepherd and grow key creation care programs to lift the U.S. Catholic ecological voice, champion Church leadership, advocate for climate solutions and educate and organize intergenerational faith-driven audiences. Thanks for your generous support! In order to meet our goal, we will leave the campaign open for a few more weeks. Please give what you can. Any amount will help!

Catholic Climate Covenant in the news:

Has Biden kept his climate-related promises?

Has President Joe Biden kept his campaign promises to protect and preserve Our Common Home? That’s the question asked by The Tablet, a publication out of the Brooklyn Diocese. Jose Aguto, our executive director, was among the Catholic leaders providing answers.

Jose noted that the Biden administration has elevated environmental justice into mainstream awareness and enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, “the first ever significant national federal climate legislation.”

But Jose added that he would like to see the administration offer more leadership internationally, especially in supporting developing nations with climate resilience. You can read the whole article via this link.

More Americans are turning to eco-spirituality, but not activism  

The Washington Post reports on a wave of nature-focused spirituality that’s changing traditional religious denominations and practices. But while the climate crisis is feeding some of the interest in nature-based spirituality, not everyone is drawn to environmental activism.

The Post piece quotes Dan Misleh, our founder, who said he thinks that renewed spiritual interest in nature doesn’t necessarily translate into action in support of specific policies or changed behaviors.

“What I do see is there are more and more people concerned about climate change because more and more people are experiencing it. Now they’re asking tougher questions: What does the science say? How does my faith inform my understanding of my place in the universe?” Dan said.

Read the whole article via this link.

Events

Covenant Spring Mixer

Last month Catholic Climate Covenant gathered with partners and longtime supporters to celebrate Spring and our work together. His Excellency Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., attended our Washington D.C. gathering of 50 leaders, friends, and long-time supporters and reminded us that Catholic Climate Covenant has been doing Laudato Si’ well before there was a Laudato Si’!

Watch video of his remarks here. He encouraged us to continue to be a beacon of hope and courage against a future threatened by climate change and environmental degradation. Thank you to all who attended! View more photos on Facebook here and Instagram here.

Cranaleith Spiritual Center in Philadelphia is hosting an eco-spiritual retreat entitled “Ancestry and the Earth” on July 15.  The retreat aims to deepen eco-spirituality by attuning to the wisdom of those who came before us. Register here.

More Creation Care News

With Franciscan sisters' $1.5 million gift, Network to take on climate lobbying

"Thanks to a recent $2 million gift from the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization founded by religious sisters more than 50 years ago, will expand its lobbying portfolio on Capitol Hill to include climate advocacy," reported NCR.

Jose Aguto, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, called this new alliance and Network's foray into the climate justice lobby "fantastic" news. "For 50 years, Network has been lifting up the moral voice of the sisters, one of the most powerful moral voices we have nationally and globally; this is a real boon for those of us working for climate action." Aguto said that Catholic Climate Covenant was open wholeheartedly to collaborating with Network. 

Pope Francis condemned “consumerist greed” and “selfish hearts” as responsible for the climate crisis in his yearly message for World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the Vatican announced on May 25.  Inspired by the words of the Prophet Amos, the pope chose “let justice and peace flow” as the theme for the Season of Creation, which runs from September 1-October 4.  Francis said his message was inspired by an Indigenous and Catholic pilgrimage site in Canada, which he visited last summer.

Young people are leading the way in opposing "an economic system that is unfair to the poor and an enemy of the environment," Pope Francis wrote in the preface to a new book written by the Jesuit economist Fr. Gaël Giraud and the Italian founder of the International Slow Food Movement.

"They are not only asking us; they are doing it," Francis said, pointing to a trend in choosing to consume less, to buy products "produced following strict rules of environmental and social respect" and to lower their carbon footprints with the means of transportation they use.

Sage Lenier, who'll be speaking on the Ecological Education panel at Laudato Si’ in the United States Conference was recognized by Time magazine as a 2023 Next Generation Leader for her work on climate and environmental education. Lenier, 24, designed the Solutions for a Sustainable & Just Future course at the University of California, Berkeley. Since then it has enrolled over 1,800 students, 600 of whom Lenier taught herself.

The Diocese of Lexington is providing money for the building of four new homes for survivors of last year’s historic floods in the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky. Joshua van Cleef, director of the Lexington Diocese's peace and justice office said the houses will "offer safe, energy efficient and sustainable housing."

The Vatican announced a new phase of its work toward net-zero emissions goals for its iconic Saint Peter’s Basilica, which attracts 10 million visitors a year. Pope Francis previously pledged that all of Vatican City will be carbon neutral by 2050.

Eighth graders at St. Thomas More Academy in Washington, D.C. are tending to more than six dozen trees around their campus as part of an annual service project. The mission to increase the district’s tree cover is the result of a collaboration among several D.C.-area organizations that have planted tens of thousands of trees. One of the groups, Laudato Trees, has sought out Catholic locations, seeing potential in the church’s expansive property footprint in the nation’s capital.

Sisters Act!

In observation of Laudato Si’ Week (May 21-28) the Sisters of St. Francis in Clinton, Iowa, prepared a series of reflections that offer some perspective on the progress that has been made and how the Laudato Si’ Action Plan relates to our lives and society. The series is available for all to read, https://clintonfranciscans.com/laudato-si-week-reflections-2023

Interdiocesan Creation Care Network  

Maryknoll Affiliates Working Group completed the 7 LSAP Goals Worksheets for individuals, couples and families to support LSAP Plan creation.  The 3-page worksheets are designed so that a household can sit down and read through them together, discuss the suggestions, and choose actions to commit to over 7 years.

The worksheets are meant to stand alone, and serve anyone who downloads them from the Gods Plan(et) website via this link.

The Archdiocese of Washington, DC has formally endorsed and presented testimony on a major bill to address climate justice in the District of Columbia, the Healthy Homes for All Act. 

Maryland Catholics for Our Common Home, a group of lay Catholics in the Archdiocese of Washington, Archdiocese of Baltimore, and Diocese of Wilmington worked together to advocate for six bills that were signed into law this year. The bills will improve low-income Marylanders’ access to public transportation; reform Maryland’s energy efficiency program to direct more resources to low-income people; clean up emissions from heavy trucks; limit the presence of toxic “forever chemicals”; and promote the construction of offshore wind energy farms.

The Metro New York Catholic Climate Movement successfully advocated for the Archdiocese of New York to add a Care of Creation page to its website. The Archdiocese also featured the Church of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan in a nice video about the Jesuit parish’s participation in the Laudato Si’ Action Platform.

The Boston Catholic Climate Movement has accepted two young men to work in the archdiocese as part of Catholic Climate Covenant's Common Home Corps. BCCM is also writing letters to each parish in the archdiocese, asking them to identify a lay leader to take on the effort of starting a care for creation team.

The Creation Care team in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul-Minneapolis is working to enlist parishes in energy efficiency programs. The team’s spirituality working group has developed the Kateri Tekawitha Chaplet modeled on a Franciscan Servite Chaplet and a reflection on the seven days of creation. The chaplet is available at this link.

Sacred Heart Parish, Colorado Springs, is hosting a weekly creation care chat with a rabbi-in-training in Israel, which has attracted participants from four continents and many faiths. They meet on Thursdays for half an hour, with themes chosen from the Eco Bible. Anyone is welcome to join via this link.

The Creation Care team in the Diocese of San Diego is contributing to the Salton Sea Initiative. The Salton Sea has become toxic, which allows for potentially lucrative lithium extraction in support of renewable energy, but harmful dust coincides with significant respiratory health problems. The CCT is reaching out to parishioners, community developers and San Diego State University scientists to work on educating and empowering the local community so they might enter negotiations with corporate entities descending upon the towns with the intention of extracting the lithium.

Carmel Catholic High School in the Archdiocese of Chicago won First Place in the Illinois Green School Project. Students, teachers, and faculty focused on cutting down waste from the cafeteria, classrooms and electronics. The program involved two classes: a dual credit environmental science class and a dual credit human ecological footprint class. Congratulations on the recognition!

High schools in the Ignatian Family have taken action during the school year to live out the vital mission to Care for Our Common Home. This fun video celebrates all the students, faculty, and staff who are working to make the world a more just and sustainable place.

Well done, all!

Job openings

Catholic Relief Services has two summer job openings for graduate or undergraduate university students in its Strategic Change Platform for Landscape Restoration program. More info on the jobs is here.