Sister Joan Brown Quoted in NCR Article on Laudato Si

“There has to be some deep-seeded shifts in the church for us to really grapple with this largest ethical and moral concern of our time. And the longer it takes us, the more we run into greater storms, greater need for emergency relief.”  -Sister Joan Brown, executive director New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light.

On May 24, the National Catholic Reporter published an article examining whether the Catholic Church and the faith community at large have heeded the message in Pope Francis’ encyclical letter on the environment, Laudato Si: Care: On Care for Our Common Home.

According to the article, entitled “Five years ago, Pope Francis asked us to care for Earth. Have we listened?” there has been much conversation in faith circles around the global climate crisis,  even though we are far short of our goals.  The conversation puts a major emphasis on the Philippines: a country facing extreme negative repercussions from climate change.  Climate activist Br. Jaazeal Jakosalem Jakosalem said Laudato Si’ has affirmed the work of church leaders in the Philippines to address the climate emergency by placing creation care squarely in the framework of church teaching.

The commitment to addressing climate change has led bishops in the Philippines and Ireland to divest from fossil fuels.

Despite these small victories, the overall effort to promote a broad campaign against climate change within the charge has fallen short. “Even with those examples, the consensus among Catholic ecological leaders is those responses have been not nearly as widespread as Francis sought with his universal call “for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet,” said the NCR article, authored by Brian Roewe.

“Sadly, the urgency of this ecological conversion seems not to have been grasped by international politics, where the response to the problems raised by global issues such as climate change remains very weak and a source of grave concern,” Pope Francis said in January in remarks to the Vatican diplomatic corps.

Sister Joan Brown, executive director New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light in Albuquerque agrees. “There has to be some deep-seeded shifts in the church for us to really grapple with this largest ethical and moral concern of our time. And the longer it takes us, the more we run into greater storms, greater need for emergency relief,” said Sister Joan.   Read full article