Creation quotes for newsletters from the Laudato Si  encyclical of Pope Francis

We suggest that parishes use these quotes  throughout the year.   We will send them in ‘batches’ rather than the whole year all at once, so they don’t get forgotten with the New Year resolution!   (LS  plus number =  the source paragraph of Laudato Si).

For a collection of all the quotes for the liturgical year, please see the Resources Page.

Period 2   Theme: Peace and Justice
(including Peace and Homelessness Sundays, New Year to Ash Wednesday)

Week beginning Sunday 1^st January 2017 (perhaps a sentence to remind people, e.g. ‘Pope Francis says:’)

Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths. (But) the climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. (LS 20, LS 23)

Week beginning Sunday 8^th January

Very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.(LS 23)

Week beginning Sunday 15^th January

A number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides …) released mainly as a result of human activity… The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system.     (LS 23)

Week beginning Sunday 22^nd January

Many of the poor live in areas particularly affected by phenomena related to warming, and their means of subsistence are largely dependent on natural reserves and ecosystemic services such as agriculture, fishing and forestry. They have no other financial activities or resources which can enable them to adapt to climate change or to face natural disasters, and their access to social services and protection is very limited. (LS 25)

Week beginning Sunday 29^th January

There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation. They are not recognized by international conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they have left behind, without enjoying any legal protection whatsoever. Sadly, there is widespread indifference to such suffering, which is even now taking place throughout our world.(LS 25)

Week beginning Sunday February 5^th

Many professional(s) live far from the poor … This lack of physical contact and encounter, … can lead to a numbing of conscience … Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it 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. (LS  49)

Week beginning Sunday February 12^th

To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption. (LS  50)

Week beginning Sunday February 19^th

People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more.  A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning.  (LS  55)

Week beginning Sunday February 26^th

If we are truly concerned to develop an ecology capable of remedying the damage we have done, no branch of the sciences and no form of wisdom can be left out, and that includes religion and the language particular to it. The Catholic Church is open to dialogue with philosophical thought; this has enabled her to produce various syntheses between faith and reason. The development of the Church’s social teaching represents such a synthesis with regard to social issues; this teaching is called to be enriched by taking up new challenges. (LS 63)