A Summary of ‘Laudato Si,’ – Praise be to You – On care for our common home

Pope Francis’ first encyclical is focused on the idea of “integral ecology,” connecting care of the natural world with justice for the poorest and most vulnerable people. Only by radically reshaping our relationships with God, with our neighbours and with the natural world, he says, can we hope to tackle the threats facing our planet today. Science, he insists, is the best tool by which we can listen to the cry of the earth, while dialogue and education are the two keys that can “help us to escape the spiral of self-destruction which currently engulfs us.”

At the heart of the Pope’s reflections is the question: “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?” The answers he suggests call for profound changes to political, economic, cultural and social systems, as well as to our individual lifestyles.

Chapter 1 sets out six of the most serious challenges facing “our common home”

Pope Francis’ encyclical: This “wounded world” needs “an ecological conversion”

The “Laudato Si’” encyclical says: we have grown up believing that we have the right to plunder the planet at our will. The environmental crisis is an anthropological crisis and is liked to our development model: the structural causes of an economy that does not respect mankind need to be eliminated. Pope Francis’ encyclical is an appeal to governments and institutions and a proposal for new ways of living. The defence of nature is not compatible with abortion and embryo experimentation. For the first time ever, a papal encyclical quotes a Sufi mystic, Ali Al-Khawwas

Click here to read the Encyclical

The Mother Earth, our common home, “cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.” We need an “ecological conversion”. Safeguarding our planet must go hand in hand with ensuring justice for the poor and a solution to the structural problems of an economy, the sole focus of which is profit.

Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si’”, a 246-paragraph-long document divided into six chapters, is a new contribution to the Church’s social doctrine, bringing humans face to face with their responsibilities. This articulate text, which goes into great detail at certain points, makes ample reference to the documents of many bishops’ conferences and does not just address Christians but “every person living on this planet”. Francis reiterates the words of his predecessors, urging people to “eliminate[e] the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and correc[t] models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment”.