Environmental concerns neglected despite Laudato Si’, warns Francis biographer

Austen Ivereigh said there was ‘too little urgency in our Church’ to respond to the document, which he said was the most consequential social teaching since Rerum Novarum.

Environmental issues are often “an extra curricular rather than a central concern” in the Church, papal biographer and commentator Austen Ivereigh has warned.

Speaking during an online talk to more than 100 justice and peace campaigners from at least 11 dioceses titled “A Celebration of Laudato Si‘”, Dr Ivereigh suggested that despite Laudato Si’ being Pope Francis’ “ground-breaking encyclical” and “the most consequential papal social teaching since Rerum Novarum in 1891”, he felt there is “too little urgency in our Church” to respond.

The event was organised to mark Laudato Si’s tenth anniversary by the northern and southern dioceses environmental networks, both linked to the National Justice and Peace Network. Ivereigh said that with the apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum in 2023, one “could sense the frustration of Pope Francis” both with the failure of political leaders to act as they had promised to protect “our common home” and with those in the Church who continue to deny the evidence of climate change.

Ivereigh saw signs of hope in projects and activities that showed how “creaturely life can come back in abundance where humans not just restrain their own destructive, extractive practices, but when they create space for other creatures to recover co-agency with humans”.

He congratulated justice and peace campaigning and promoting “integral ecology”. In group discussion, supporters talked about support for the Laudato Si’ Platform, the networking of Laudato Si’ animators both inside and outside the Church, Cafod’s Livesimply award and preparing for the Season of Creation in the autumn.

Hopes over the next 10 years included that projects inspired by Laudato Si’ would increase and flourish. Learning to live with less will be a priority and transformation in the direction of sustainable lifestyles. There was commitment to the 9 July mass lobby of Parliament, asking MPs to take action on climate, debt and nature.

How Laudato si’ made green ideas mainstream

Christians step up campaign for the environment on tenth anniversary of Laudato Si’

Stay updated — add us as a preferred news source on Google: