Loretto heeds the pope’s latest urgent plea on behalf of Earth and all life

Loretto learned about Laudate Deum, Pope Francis’s follow-up to his encyclical, Laudato Si’, at its October 2023 Community Gathering.

Laudate Deum is a call to heed the gravity of the moment and undertake change before it is too late for Earth and life on Earth. The pope urges us to do this “in conscience, and with an eye to the children who will pay for the harm done.”

Efforts on behalf of Earth Loretto has been making thus far are multifaceted (many undertaken at the Motherhouse in Nerinx, Ky.): helping heal ecosystems and mitigate carbon through the Carbon Reduction Fund; practicing regenerative agriculture; instituting green burials; restoring ecosystems; building up a local food shed; including eco-spirituality in Community liturgies, retreats and Community members’ lives; providing ecological education at the Motherhouse and beyond; and advocacy efforts across the Community and at the U.N. Loretto also promotes the rights and health of farmworkers as a critical component of ecological justice. The Investment Committee engages in ecological economics with groups like the Iroquois Valley Farm.

Please join Loretto in this work to heal Earth. Read the pope’s encyclical Laudato Si’ and the follow-up Laudate Deum. Make lifestyle changes as you can, and help educate others.

Donate to Loretto’s Carbon Reduction Fund by visiting our donate page. From the dropdown menu, choose Carbon Reduction Fund.

With the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.

Pope Francis, Laudate Deum

Educating for Earth

What is Loretto’s role as an educator in this time of urgency? Jessie Rathburn CoL shared her thoughts at the October 2023 Gathering:

“We have been honing our skills with groups with whom we are already in relationship: our schools, both the students and the teachers, and like-minded organizations in the area. And we are positioning ourselves to expand those efforts when the time is right as we develop more relationships with local folks in the area, with schools, with churches, with scout troops, so that more people can come, and not only share in the beauty of this place and in the spirituality of this place, but really learn the intricacies of life all around them, to develop those relationships, to set us up for being a Community of people of transformative action.”

In Laudate Deum, the pope writes, “I ask everyone to accompany this pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home and to help make it more beautiful, because that commitment has to do with our personal dignity and highest values.” Loretto is listening. Will you help us spread the word? We all are educators in this urgent time.

To read all the articles in the Winter 2024 issue of Loretto Magazine, click here.