Earth Day & the Legacy of Pope Francis

                                                             Earth Day Poster -- Montreal 1970

This is Earth Day, the global celebration of our planetary home that first took place on April 22nd 1970, in part as a response to the unnatural disaster of a blown oil derrick off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. The resulting oil slick killed seabirds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions.

Earth Day is always a combination of the good, the bad, and ugly. We are grateful for the astonishing complexity of the natural world, chastened by our abuses, determined to do better. 

Christians and other people of faith also acknowledge both Creator and Creation. In the United Church of Canada many congregations include an Earth Sunday, usually the Sunday closest to Earth Day. This year the United Church has established Together for the Love of Creation and invited our "communities of faith, networks, and regions...to initiate and participate in climate justice events during the week of April 20‒27 to pray, learn, and act for the love of Creation." https://fortheloveofcreation.ca/earth-week-2025/

                                                  United Church Moderator Carmen Lansdowne 

Yesterday we received the sad but not surprising news that Pope Francis had died at the age of 88. The pope was the first to adopt this name in recognition of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of the environment. During his pontificate Pope Francis was committed to honouring Creation. His greatest achievement was his 2015 environmental encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home. It seems appropriate that Francis died between Easter Sunday and Earth Day given his deep commitment to the Risen Christ and caring for Creation. 

To recognize the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si a group of us revisited the document during a three-week study and we used the excellent book, The Ten Green Commandments of Laudato Si as a guide. Here are those directives from Laudato Si as identified by author Joshtrum Isaac Kureethadam. We can all read them and take them to heart:

The main messages of the encyclical can be summed up in terms of “ten green commandments” from Pope Francis. Here they are: 

I. Earth, our common home, is in peril. Take care of it. 

II. Listen to the cry of the poor who are the disproportionate victims of the crisis of our common home. 

III. Rediscover a theological vision of the natural world as good news (gospel). 

IV. Recognize that the abuse of creation is ecological sin. 

V. Acknowledge the deeper human roots of the crisis of our common home. 

VI. Develop an integral ecology as we are all interrelated and interdependent. 

VII. Learn a new way of dwelling in our common home and manage it more responsibly through a new economics and a new political culture. 

VIII. Educate toward ecological citizenship through change of lifestyles. 

IX. Embrace an ecological spirituality that leads to communion with all of God’s creatures. 

X. Care for our common home by cultivating the ecological virtues of praise, gratitude, care, justice, work, sobriety, and humility.