Pope Francis’ linked his prayer intention for the month of September to the Season of Creation, running until the Feast of St Francis of Assisi on 4 October.
In a short video released on 30 August announcing his intention – “For the cry of the Earth” – the Pope said: “If we took the planet’s temperature, it would tell us that the Earth has a fever and it is sick, just like anyone who’s sick.”
He said that “dealing with the environmental crisis caused by humans, such as climate change, pollution, or the loss of biodiversity, begs responses that are not only ecological but are also social, economic, and political.” Francis emphasised the need to “commit ourselves to the fight against poverty and the protection of nature, changing our personal and community habits”.
In a statement for the season last weekend, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I warned that “the environmental threat is a dimension of the extended crisis in contemporary civilisation”.
He reiterated his conviction that Churches and religions can contribute significantly to a vital spiritual and evaluative conversion for the sake of the future of humanity and the planet. “The Christian faith recognises the supreme value of humanity and creation alike,” he said.
More than 300 Filipino Christians joined an ecumenical creation walk at St Andrew Theological Seminary to begin the season last weekend. In a message Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, president of the Philippines Bishops’ Conference, suggested that “indigenous peoples teach us the connection between all creatures”.
The 18-member Pacific Island Forum Leaders’ Summit in Tonga last week called on the international community to address the climate crisis. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres attended and issued a warning that rising sea levels are “putting this Pacific paradise in peril”.
The forum’s secretary general Baron Waqa said the region was “at the centre of geo-strategic interest, and at the forefront of a battle against climate change and its impacts”. In June, Fiji’s Archbishop Peter Loy Chong of Suva told a Rome climate conference that “the world has yet really to listen deeply to the voices, particularly to the cries, of Oceania people”.
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