Message for our Earth
Opinion
In 2015, Pope Francis wrote Laudato Si’, the first papal letter focused on the environment addressed to every person on the planet. In this encyclical, Pope Francis wrote to each of us to share his concerns about the state of our Earth. His message is even more urgent today.
The documentary, The Letter, tells the story of Laudato Si’, and the unfolding ecological emergency. The Letter was produced by Off the Fence and Laudato Si’ Movement. The Vatican’s Dicastery of Communication and Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development also collaborated in the making of the film.
Pope Francis is the film’s star. In the film, he brings together science and faith and he shares that today you could never practise theology without dialogue with science. He reminds us that God gave us capacity for investigation and the intellectual capacity to look for truths and that the biblical story of creation is a mythical form of expression to explain our history. He urges us to look at the present.
The film brings together four of the different voices that Pope Francis has called specifically for in Laudato Si’: Voice of the Poor; Voice of the Indigenous Peoples; Voice of the Youth and Voice of Wildlife.
The voices that are featured, represent the peripheries of the ecological crisis. A teenage youth activist from India, an indigenous leader from the Amazon, a climate refugee from Senegal, and scientists from Hawaii. As the film powerfully explains, the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are growing increasingly desperate. Droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes, deforestation – they all keep getting worse and worse.
I encourage you to watch the film and explore the Laudato Si Action Platform. This platform is an initiative of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and equips us to achieve real and lasting solutions to the ecological crisis through identifying seven key action goals.
Taking a truly ground-up approach, it is rooted in the strengths and realities of communities around the world, empowering all to take ‘decisive action, here and now’ as we journey towards a better future together.
As Pope Francis reminds us, “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”.
The film ends with these key messages:
- Try to be the change you want to see in the world;
- We all need each other. None of us is an island and we can only build the future by everyone standing together;
- There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself.
Alice Dunlop is an educator and founder of Little Earthies.
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