Laudato Si Week Starts on Sunday

Laudato Si Week, a week of activities and celebrations, begins on Sunday 12 June. Laudato Si Week will see Catholics from around the world come together to mark the one year anniversary of the release of Pope Francis’ encyclical on ecology, title Laudato Si: On Care of our Common Home. Around 300 Laudato Si events are expected to take place in local communities from countries across the world.

Events at Laudato Si Week will include Eucharistic celebrations in the Amazon, educational forums in Nairobi, and a launching of GCCM-Pilipinas in the Philippines. The week kicks off with GreenFaith’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Trust on June 12, an interfaith day of celebration of the earth and action on climate change.

On June 13, a Laudato Si Online Conference will launch a series of webinars, one for each chapter of the encyclical to encourage a continued dialogue following the Pope’s “urgent appeal for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet”

Senior Vatican officials, world-renowned experts of multiple disciplines and leaders from different faiths will come together in this online conference to share their Laudato Si insights with participants. Confirmed speakers include:

• Vatican officials as Cardinal Turkson (Pontifical Council Justice & Peace), Bishop Sanchez Sorondo (Pontifical Academy of Sciences) and Cardinal Onaiyekan (Archbishop of Abuja)
• World-renowned experts as Jeffrey Sachs (bestselling author & UN Senior Advisor), Marcia McNutt (Editor-in-Chief of the Science journals) and Veerabhadran Ramanathan (atmospheric scientist)
• Faith leaders as Rabbi Rick Jacobs, Rev. Kyoichi Sugino (Buddhist Dharma Teacher) and Din Syamsuddin (Islamic scholar); and
• Notable theologians as Fr. Michael Perry (Minister General of Franciscan order), Mary Evelyn Tucker (Yale University) and Fr. Sean McDonagh (Columban eco-theologian).

Laudato Si Week will also see the launch of a #LiveLaudatoSi social media campaign to showcase how Catholics around the globe are turning Laudato Si into action.

Tomas Insua, GCCM’s Global Coordinator, said: “The earth is a gift from God and we have a moral obligation to protect and nurture it. We began Laudato Si Week as a way to celebrate the Pope’s encyclical, to use the events as a visual showcase to thank His Holiness for his leadership and advocacy on this issue.”