By CNA Staff
Editor’s note: The Message staff contributed to this report.
On Sept. 1, the Church observed the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Pope Francis established this annual Day of Prayer in 2015, saying that it would provide the faithful “a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation.” The choice of the day was also seen as a sign of unity with the Orthodox Church, which established Sept. 1 as a day to celebrate creation in 1989.
This celebration also launched the Season of Creation, which continues until the feast of St. Francis of Assisi on Oct. 4. The theme of the 2024 Season of Creation is “Hope and Act with Creation,” drawn from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
In his message for this observance, Pope Francis called the faithful to a conversion of heart that extends Christian charity to all of God’s creation and urged them to protect the environment.
Christians, the pope said, bear witness to their faith in part “by caring for the flesh of suffering humanity.” Christianity acknowledges that “everything is ordered to the glory of God,” Pope Francis said; the spirit of “universal fraternity and Christian peace,” he emphasized, “should also be extended to creation.”
The Holy Spirit “guides us and calls us to conversion,” Pope Francis said, “to a change in lifestyle in order to resist the degradation of our environment and to engagement in that social critique which is above all a witness to the real possibility of change.”
Care for creation, the pope said, is not merely an ethical issue but a theological one, one that is marked by the act of love in which God created human beings.
Commenting on the Season of Creation, Evansville Bishop Joseph M. Siegel noted that part of our commitment to faithful stewardship is the call to care for our Common Home.
“As a largely rural diocese, our local Church recognizes in a special way the need to ensure that we have pure water, clean air and uncorrupted soil to produce the fruits of the earth in order to feed our families and the world. Farmers, by the nature of their work, are close to the cycles of the earth and are well-aware of the fragility of the environment. All of us need to have a similar appreciation that the gift of creation is both a blessing and responsibility entrusted to us by God. It is an attitude that we must act upon so that we might preserve this gift for ourselves and for future generations.”
The Diocese is observing the Season of Creation by encouraging pastors to celebrate a Mass for Creation to thank God for this precious gift and to ask His help to be good stewards of our natural resources. In addition, the Diocesan staff is having an in-service on environmental issues to learn about practical ways to better care for our Common Home, both individually and in the various ministries and programs of our Diocese.
On the state-wide level, the Catholic bishops of Indiana are preparing a joint pastoral letter on the care for creation.