What is Laudato Si'?
In 2015, Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si’ inspired and urged the world’s Catholics and all people of good will to take urgent action against the injustice of the climate emergency and the ecological crisis, to protect the poor and future generations.
The Laudato Si’ Action Platform was developed in response to Pope Francis’ call. This seven-year journey to global sustainability and spiritual conversion offers resources to help people all over the world generate plans to accomplish seven Laudato Si’ Goals.
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Resource Guide
SSND Reflections
Ecological Conversion
Changing our hearts
In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis identifies our current ecological crisis as a “summons to profound interior conversion.” What everyone needs, he writes, is an “‘ecological conversion,’ whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them” (LS 217). In essence, ecological conversion is not just changing our actions, but changing our hearts to where we see the intimate connection between God and all beings so we can more readily listen to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.
According to laudatosimovement.org, an ecological conversion involves four steps:
- Recognizing that we have harmed creation
- Repentance and turning to the Creator
- Commitment to change and becoming good stewards of creation
- Community conversion
Ecological conversion takes place at the personal level, but as Pope Francis notes, a community conversion is equally important: “Social problems must be addressed by community networks and not simply by the sum of individual good deeds… The ecological conversion needed to bring about lasting change is also a community conversion” (LS 219). Laudato Si' is not just an encyclical; it is a movement.
“We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.” -Pope Francis (LS #139)