FCJ Sisters and Companions in Mission around the world want to be active participants in the call to Care for Our Common Home. We want to live in the spirit of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ encyclical letter on the environment through our prayer and through our action. We want to make connections with others, especially younger people, who are passionate about ecological issues and join in positive action to bring about change.

Heads of state, climate experts and campaigners will meet in Glasgow later this year for COP26. It is crucial that they agree on how to respond to the climate emergency. COP stands for the Climate Change Conference of the Parties. It is hosted by the United Nations with currently 197 member countries. This will be the 26th COP, which has met every year since 1995.

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Why does it matter?

In the 2015 Paris Agreement 195 countries agreed to make changes to limit the global average temperature increase to below 2°C and to make efforts to make it less than 1.5°C. COP26 is an opportunity to check on these commitments and to pursue other efforts to do more for our planet. Experts say that unless serious actions are undertaken we are currently set for average global temperatures to rise by 4°C. Real action is ever more urgent.

COP26 is being host by the United Kingdom in Glasgow. The UK, as host country, will have a major role in setting the agenda and leading the discussions having proposed these four goals: limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, adapting to protect communities and natural habitats, mobilising climate finance and working together to accelerate action.

Pope Francis, who has already committed the Vatican State to a net zero future, has recently expressed his plans to attend the conference and address world leaders.

It is important that all of us concerned about the climate emergency let the politicians in our countries know that we are watching and expecting them to do more to respond to this worldwide crisis. As FCJ Sisters and Companions in Mission we are looking at ways of getting involved in the process toward COP26 and are praying for its success.

Laudato Si’ has put Catholic teaching in the context of today’s ecological crisis and climate emergency. It offers a vision for building a more just and sustainable world and it has had an impact around the world, far beyond the Catholic circle. One of the most important points Pope Francis highlights is that the climate crisis impacts in a especial way the most vulnerable people in the world right now. 

Integral ecology is a key concept which flows from Pope Francis’ understanding that “everything is closely interrelated and today’s problems call for a vision capable of taking into account every aspect of the global crisis” (LS, 137). COVID-19 has made clear how deeply we are all interconnected and interdependent. We have an opportunity to create a more caring, fraternal, peaceful and sustainable world in harmony with the natural world, our common home.

FCJ Sisters are joining the Piattaforma di Iniziative Laudato Si’ del Dicastero per il Servizio dello Sviluppo Umano Integrale for everyone in the Church to learn and grow together as we journey towards full sustainability in the holistic spirit of integral ecology.

Read more about how FCJ Sisters and Companions in Mission around the world are responding to the call of Laudato Si’ to care for our common home:

• Commitment of the FCJ Area of Europe to mark the FCJ Bicentenary
• Community Garden at the FCJ Retreat and Conference Centre, Calgary, Canada
• Upcycling, urban gardening, and environmental awareness and disaster risk reduction management at the FCJ Learning and Development Center, Manila
• Stewardship of Creation plan at St Philomena School, Portsmouth, USA
• The Living Water Myanmar project
• Bringing hope through planting in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
• Marking Laudato Si’ Week and the Season of Creation in our FCJ Schools in Limerick, Ireland
• FCJ Young Adult Network reflections celebrating five Years of Laudato Si’
• Mangrove planting in Mindanao, Philippines

The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely.
Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf,
in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face.
The ideal is not only
to pass from the exterior to the interior
to discover the action of God in the soul,
but also to discover God in all things.
Saint Bonaventure teaches us that
‘contemplation deepens
the more we feel
the working of God’s grace within our hearts,
and the better we learn to encounter God
in creatures outside ourselves.’ [5]

We recognize God’s Spirit in the global movement which is raising the awareness of how we are destroying our Earth.

Concerns around the care of our Common Home are of great urgency and we cannot delay addressing them.  We judge them to be matters of deep justice.

Because our actions flow from a faith perspective, we will continue to deepen our awareness and understanding of creation theology.  Likewise we will deepen our contemplative awareness of the whole cosmos.

We want to help each other to reflect constantly on how our lifestyle decisions, small or large, affect the earth and the poorest peoples of the Earth. [6]

We will make connections with others, especially younger people, who are passionate about ecological issues.  We will join with them in positive action to bring about change.

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. [7]

[4] Laudato Si’, Encyclical ‘On Care For Our Common Home’, Pope Francis, 24 May 2015
[5] Ibid. No. 233
[6] Ibid. No. 49, ‘Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach… must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.’
[7] Ibid. No.  139