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Laudato Si' Week
May 16-24, 2020
On the 5th anniversary of his landmark encyclical Laudato Si', Pope Francis makes an urgent call for renewed vigor in confronting environmental challenges to our common home, the earth.
Creation Care Activities
Dozens of action items for more sustainable living are each accompanied by an excerpt from Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si'.
Click image to open Creation Care Activities in new page. Courtesy of SPX Creation Care.
Take action on Laudato Si'.
The St. Pius X Creation Care Team is a Catholic Social Ministry that meets regularly to address areas where the parish and its members can improve their sustainability practices.
We encourage you to act on excerpts from the encyclical that are paired with specific action items you can do, shown at left.
If you'd like to include print-ready ideas in your church bulletin or outreach, contact Chuck for 30+ activities.
Where to begin?
Jump start with at-home family activity
To find out where you might go, start with where are. A simple at-home scavenger hunt gives you a first look at your home energy consumption. How many points did you score? Go to the Energy Scavenger Hunt.
Solar output.
Solar panels atop the St. Pius X pole barn are currently powering part of the parish rectory's electricity. To find out the equivalent number of cars taken off the road or of trees planted, see Solar Panel Output.
A map of solar congregations shows inter-faith sites in Indiana with solar installations, and a map of 1,600 Indiana solar installations is at https://www.sirensolar.org/solar-map/.
Find out if you are a candidate for solar panels at work or at home. For starters, ask a qualified installer for an estimate. Go sunward!
Image the sun.
If we are to embrace solar energy as an integral part of our renewable energy mix, let's get more familiar with the sun. One way to track the path of the sun over the course of a year is to make a solargraph, the image resulting from a long-duration exposure of the sun using a pinhole camera.
Some students of St. Pius X Catholic School started solargraphs around the 2019 December solstice. They will recover their solargraph cans around the June solstice to yield a personal timestamp of the first six months of 2020.
Try composting.
The US Environmental Protection Agency suggests nearly a third of what we throw away--food scraps and yard waste--could be converted into useable organic matter. Per the EPA, compost lessens the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. See the EPA for benefits and basics of composting.
More (or less!)...
Sustainability isn't about offsetting the pollution or carbon impact from what we do. It's about doing less harm in the first place. Less consumption, for example, yields less waste. In turn, less waste serves the poor. Pope Francis references his namesake St. Francis, who "shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace." (par. 10)
End with a prayer.
Pope Francis writes, "Our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God." (par. 119)
The SPX Creation Care Team ends each meeting with "Laudato Si' Roulette," in which someone scrolls rapidly through the online text of Laudato Si', stops randomly, and reads the chance paragraph.
It's remarkable how nearly every paragraph of Pope Francis' encyclical is a prayer unto itself. Try it!