Probing Pope Francis’ Encyclical LAUDATO SI’ on Care for our Common Home – an Open Forum held June 30, 2015 at St. Gabriel’s Church
Dr. Dennis O’Hara and Fr. Steve Dunn, C.P. facilitated an Open Forum on Pope Francis’ new encyclical Laudato Si’ on June 30, 2015 at our parish. Close to three hundred people attended.
Many from different parishes and religious congregations all across Toronto joined us to celebrate the encyclical, to draw and to share insights from it. It was a Spirit-filled event.
We thank Paul Royes, one of our parishioners, for making the video available.
Some highlights from the encyclical:
“Young people demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded. I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet.” [paras. 13, 14]
“ … we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” [para. 49]
“ … our planet is a homeland and that humanity is one people living in a common home.” [para. 164]
“We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world. The effects of the present imbalance can only be reduced by our decisive action, here and now.” [para. 161]