What have we done?
A short reflection from CAFOD, based on teachings found in Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis, and the urgency to care for our common home. Ecology is not just about plants and animals, it also includes the human family. Climate change, global poverty, species loss, inequality – these are all interconnected, part of the same ecology which makes up the rich tapestry of life on earth. To tackle these issues, an integrated approach is required.
This animation is part of CAFOD’s Our Common Home campaign. Visit cafod.org.uk/climate to get involved and take action.
TRANSCRIPT
Climate change affects us all, but it is the poorest who will be hit hardest.
People in poverty will suffer first and worst from climate change.
Climate change threatens to undo the progress we have made to tackle poverty.
“Mother earth now cries out because of the harm we have inflicted on her.” – Pope Francis
Laudato Si’, On care for our common home.
Pope Francis, 2015
217 “The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast”.[152]For this reason, the ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion
217 So what they all need is an “ecological conversion”, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.
218. We must examine our lives and acknowledge the ways in which we have harmed God’s creation through our actions and our failure to act. We need to experience a conversion, or change of heart”
219. The ecological conversion needed to bring about lasting change is also a community conversion.
220. This conversion calls for a number of attitudes which together foster a spirit of generous care, full of tenderness. First, it entails gratitude and gratuitousness, a recognition that the world is God’s loving gift, and that we are called quietly to imitate his generosity in self-sacrifice and good works.
220. As believers, we do not look at the world from without but from within, conscious of the bonds with which the Father has linked us to all beings. By developing our individual, God-given capacities, an ecological conversion can inspire us to greater creativity and enthusiasm in resolving the world’s problems
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