Leader of the People’s Pilgrimage
Yeb Sano, Filipino Climate delegate, set off on his pilgrimage for the climate yesterday. Do read his moving letter on Earth Day on his site:
The People’s Pilgrimage
Category: Climate Change
Cycle to Paris – Sign up now for Phase 1
Checking the route in Paris
Now’s the time to sign up for phase 1 of ‘Cycle to Paris’, the English leg. We leave Westminster Cathedral on August 29th and arrive in Newhaven on August 30th. Download the application form and send it back with deposit. Application form Phase 1 London-Newhaven
Cycle 100 miles over the North and South Downs, meet parishioners and discuss the urgency of action on Climate Change leading up to the Paris Climate talks in December.
£130 covers accommodation and food and the support van, plus railfare from Newhaven. Sign up today!
Gearing up to Climate Change
We ARE on the right track!
All they need is the bike!
Cycling Pilgrimage to Paris
We have been very busy these last few weeks preparing for the Cycle to Paris project. The Paris Climate talks in December are crucial for the future of all countries, but especially for those most affected by the climate change going on now – countries such as Bangladesh, the Philippines and the Pacific islands.
Justice and Peace and CAFOD are offering a chance to a small group to cycle to Paris – to increase our own commitment to action, and to raise awareness and commitment amongst others about the need for change on every level.
Find our application form and further information here.
Care 4 Creation Month – a letter from the Global Catholic Climate Movement
The Holy Father’s Universal Prayer Intention for April 2015 is:
“That people may learn to respect creation and care for it as a gift of God.”
We come together in this coming Easter Season to celebrate creation and our communion in the Body of Christ. In April 2015 we would like to invite your parish community to join Pope Francis’ universal prayer intention for creation and prepare for his upcoming encyclical on ecology and climate change. Our concern for creation is above all a concern for life and what is life-giving.
This concern for creation is especially urgent in this time of climate change. There is a strong scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human action and will very likely have catastrophic consequences if not addressed. Climate change is here and now, affecting all countries, but the poor and those without reserves suffer the most. Saint John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have spoken of the urgent need for action
on this moral issue (see Catholic teachings on climate change: bit.ly/PopesClimate).
The invitation to your parish is twofold:
1. INVITATION TO PRAY:
As Christians we believe in the power of prayer, so we encourage you to include the Holy Father’s prayer intention (“That people may learn to respect creation and care for it as a gift of God”) into your community’s liturgy throughout April. Also, you can find several resources with a Care for Creation focus attached to this letter and online at bit.ly/care4creationmonth, that you could incorporate into the prayer life of your parish:
Rosary meditations, Holy Hour meditations, litany to the Holy Trinity, daily meditations, etc.
2. INVITATION TO ACT:
Pope Francis told us: “On climate change there is a clear, definitive and ineluctable ethical imperative to act.” So we have prepared a Catholic petition addressed to the world leaders who will meet in a U.N. Climate Summit at Paris in December 2015, to urge them to commit to ambitious, pro-life action and solve the urgent climate crisis. We hope that you can join us in promoting the petition within your parishioners. Instructions are available online at bit.ly/catholicpetition
As Catholics we choose respect for life, and we are called to turn from how we have caused damage to ourselves, others, and creation, to realize how we have missed the mark and inadvertently caused death or destruction, and to make life-giving choices. We ask forgiveness, reconcile and recommit ourselves to life so to begin again. We lift our voices for life and creation, now and in the future, with our faith in Resurrection.
Please visit bit.ly/care4creationmonth for more information and resources, such as posters and petition forms to print and promote in your parish.
Thanks and God bless you,
The Global Catholic Climate Movement
Note: the Global Catholic Climate Movement is an international network of almost 100 Catholic organizations working on the climate change issue, to care for God’s creation, for the poor –who are the most vulnerable to climate disruption–, and for our children –who will face the worst impacts in the coming years–. For more info: http://www.CatholicClimateMovement.global
Gearing up for Climate Change and the UN Paris talks
Gearing up for Climate Change: Paris and the UN Climate talks
J&P at the Pax Christi France Climate Study Day. l to r Ann Kelly, Barbara Kentish, Christine Lang – environment secretary PX France, Francis McDonagh
Pax Christi France held its annual study day in Paris on Climate Change in March with 200 participants. Present were 3 Justice and Peace members from England, with a view to establishing links ahead of the COP 21 UN Climate talks in Paris in December. Barbara Kentish and Francis McDonagh from Westminster Justice and Peace, with Ann Kelly, administrator of the National Justice and Peace Network, were hoping to add Justice and Peace support to French groups working to raise awareness of the importance of the talks.
Using Pope Benedict’s 2010 message, ‘If you want peace, protect creation’, speakers spelt out what needed to be changed to ensure humanity’s very survival in the coming decades. ‘Never before till this century’, said Dominique Lang, Assumptionist father and chaplain to Pax Christi France, ‘has the human family come together to reflect on its own future on the planet’. Challenges for all Western countries at the Paris talks will be not only to convince climate sceptics, but to raise climate change as a much higher priority on our political agendas, so that agreement can be reached to curtail carbon emissions before global warming becomes irreversible. Participants were reminded that for poorer countries climate change is not a future danger, but present scourge. Countries affected -Vanuatu, Philippines, Tonga, Guatamala and Bangladesh being the most vulnerable – are already suffering flooding, hurricanes and typhoons. It is important to accept that these and other countries of the ‘south’ need to develop, but must be supported to do so without fossil fuels
Bishop Marc Stenger, president of Pax Christi France, together with Christian journalists and scientists, called for an ‘ecological conversion’, amongst Christians, saying,
“We think it is necessary that Christians finally play their full part in the global combat for the respect for life, and become committed both spiritually and practically alongside environmental activists.”
Theologian and biologist Fabien Revol sketched out a Christian approach to the ‘end of a world’, in which hundreds of species have become extinct, resources have become depleted, oceans polluted, and land flooded. The ‘new heaven and new earth’ of Revelation promises Christ’s resurrection of all of creation. Our task is to attend to, to protect and to collaborate with God’s creation in all its becoming and all its integrity.
The French bishops are formulating their plans to welcome possibly thousands of ‘climate pilgrims’ for the Paris talks. There will be an ecumenical gathering in Notre Dame Cathedral on December 3rd, and an interfaith gathering is also planned. Pilgrimages will arrive from Germany, Italy, the UK, Scandinavia, and Africa. Dominique Lang stressed the need for awareness-raising amongst those from developing countries, since some of these are and will be the first to be affected by climate change.
Justice and Peace Westminster has joined the Pray and Fast for the Climate initiative and are planning a Pilgrimage to Paris along with other Christians, inspired by the World Council of Churches initiative, led by Martin Kopp.
Martin Kopp World Lutheran Federation delegate for Climate Conferences
See http://rcdow.org.uk/diocese/justice-and-peace/ for details.
Cycling Pilgrimage to Paris
Justice and Peace are uniting with groups of Christians and of different faiths and backgrounds who want to see an international agreement on the reduction of carbon emissions at the UN Paris Climate talks in December 2015. To highlight the huge importance of these talks we plan to cycle to Paris to take part in rallies of support for climate justice and to meet other people of faith who want to see a change in our profligate use of fossil fuel.
- Download a flyer for the event here.
Phase 1 London-Newhaven Aug 29-31st 2015
Phase 2 Dieppe-Paris 1st week in December 2015
How to get involved:
email one of addresses below, with the subject heading:
LONDON PARIS CYCLE RIDE
Give us your full name and say:
- I want to cycle this route or
- I want to be a welcomer/supporter or
- I want to donate to the project or
- I want to know more about Pray and Fast for the Climate
Westminster RC Diocese justice@rcdow.org.uk
Arundel & Brighton RC Diocese aidan.cantwell@dabnet.org
Southwark RC Diocese office@southwarkjandp.co.uk
CAFOD Westminster jstricklin-coutinho@cafod.org.uk
Pax Christi Coordinator@paxchristi.org.uk
And we will keep you posted.
Thoughts on Fasting
The Diocese of Westminster Justice & Peace Commission is one of many groups and organisations praying and fasting for the climate every month in the run-up to the UN Paris Climate talks in December 2015. As we reflect on fasting during the season of Lent, we thought we’d share these thoughts from Joan Chittister, OSB:
Thoughts on Fasting
How do we explain the meaning of fasting in our own time? The answers ring with the kind of simplicity and depth common only to the holiest of disciplines. The fact is that the values of fasting strike to the heart of a person, sharpen the soul to the presence of God, and energize the spirit in a way engorgement never can.
Fasting calls a person to authenticity. It empties us, literally, of all the non-essentials in our lives so we have room for God. It lifts our spirits beyond the mundane.
Fasting confronts our consumer mentality with a reminder of what it is to be dependent on God. It reminds us that we are not here simply to pamper ourselves. We are, indeed, expected to be our brother and sister’s keeper. We know why we are hungry. We voluntarily gave up the food we could have had. But why are they hungry? Where is the food they should be eating? And what can we do to fill them now that we are done filling only ourselves?
Fasting opens us to the truth. It makes space in us to hear others, to ask the right questions, to ingest the answers we have been too comfortable to care about for far too long. It makes room for adding “to our service a bit more prayer and reading and almsgiving,” as the Rule of Benedict says.
Fasting requires us to develop a sense of limits. No, we may not have it all, do it all, and demand it all. Our needs do not exceed the needs of others, and our needs may never become more important than theirs.
Fasting teaches us to say no to ourselves in small things so that we have the strength to say no to those people and systems and governments who want to use us to shore up their own power and profit despite the needs of others.
Pray and Fast, join in!
The Justice and Peace Commission joined with the London Boroughs Interfaith Network to Pray and Fast for the Climate on March 1st, at Collaboration House, making it the 4th such event as part of the Pray and Fast for the Climate initiative.
Click here to download the leaflet and find out about further events on the first of each month until the December Climate talks in Paris. Organise your own local event and put it on the Pray and Fast website:
Pray and Fast for the Climate
Westminster Justice and Peace began the year with not so much a bang as a clarion call for the Climate. We held a Service and a Midnight Mass for the Climate, then after an Auld Lang Syne and a mince pie or two, we watched films such as The Age of Stupid, and Conflict and Climate, to mark our climate initiative. For we have joined up with a wider movement called Pray and Fast for the Climate, which requires us to mark the first day of every month by praying and fasting for the climate, leading up to the UN talks – COP 21 – in Paris in December 2015.
The movement was inspired by a passionate speech by Yeb Sano, leader of the Filipino delegation to the UN Climate talks in Warsaw in 2013. He pleaded with the other delegates to come up with a definitive effective decision on carbon reduction binding on all countries, so as to slow down global warming. He told delegates that his own region of the Philippines was currently devastated and recovering from Typhoon Haiyan, and that his own brother was picking through the rubble for bodies of family and friends, and had not eaten for days. He was therefore going to fast until the UN had arrived at a definite and meaningful agreement on carbon reduction.
Pray and Fast for the Climate, which is both interfaith and ecumenical, has grown out of his inspiration. The Justice and Peace Commission is not only doing carrying out this witness on the first of every month in 2015, but is planning a cycling ‘pilgrimage to Paris’ at the beginning of December, so as to be there for the UN talks. Anyone who wants more information either about ‘Pray and Fast’ or the cycling pilgrimage should contact Justice and Peace at justice@rcdow.org.uk
Diocese of Westminster Justice and Peace Commission 