In this third JPIC notebook, we focus on integral ecology. It is the revolution launched by the Pope with the encyclical Laudato Si’, and now, five years later, precisely during the pandemic, it becomes increasingly current and urgent to unleash new processes in the political, economic, social and pastoral sphere of care . of our common home.
The cry of the earth and the cry of the last provokes us, challenges us! In the Notebook, after tracing the path that Laudato Si ‘unleashed, we reflect on different dimensions: social, economic, pastoral, Mariological and interreligious. There are contributions from friars, businessmen, university professors and an Imam. Integral ecology unleashes three great challenges-revolutions, which point to a conversion of our gaze on reality. It is a method of living in our common home in a new way, in a motherly way. A revolution that concerns:
– Spirituality: nurturing a “passion for caring for the world”, a new vision, a different anthropological model.
– Complexity: promoting different thinking, overcoming a reductionist method that tends to simplify. It is about discovering that reality is connected and interdependent.
– Proximity: unleashing processes of closeness and fraternity. The fraternal revolution begins by approaching the discarded, a dimension that we later find in the encyclical Fratelli Tutti.
As Franciscans, reading the signs of the times, we need to allow ourselves to be provoked by the world, to be the spark of a new course in history, which starts from waste, from the excluded, who looks at and takes charge of injustices, which puts at the center not profit, but care and beauty. That is why we decided to develop Laudato Si ‘Pacts, through the clues (found in the appendix), to formulate a Laudato Si’ project. It is a proposal that can be activated in any reality (fraternities, parishes, monasteries …) to become a leaven for change. The time has come, as a Franciscan family, to act! And do it in community!