The Laudato Si’ Action Platform is underway

Rome (Italy). On 14 November 2021, on the occasion of the World Day of the Poor, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development invites Religious Communities, Educational Institutions, Parishes,  Dioceses, Health Care Centers, Workers,  Companies, Families, Organizations, and Groups to join the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, and to make a commitment to the planning process. On that date, the Laudato Si’ Planning Guides will also be published, along with the materials useful for discerning and implementing your own Action Plan.

In the Letter in which he announces the opening of registrations, Cardinal  Peter K.A. Turkson, Prefect of the Dicastery, expresses the aims of the initiative:

“The Platform intends to promote a permanent and shared path, with the aim of growing exponentially over the next few years of this crucial decade. (…) Through this project, we will have the opportunity to learn and grow together, as well as take decisive actions aimed at building a better future in the spirit of Laudato Si'”.

This phase is part of a process promoted during the Laudato Si’ Year that began on 24 May  2020 , on the fifth anniversary of the Encyclical Letter,  which included the development of the Laudato Si’ Initiative Platform.

At the conclusion of the anniversary year, 25 May 2021, with a Video message, Pope Francis announced the Laudato si’  Action Platform, “a seven-year journey that will involve our communities in different ways, so that they become totally sustainable, in the spirit of integral ecology.”

The journey is inspired by the vision of integral ecology proposed by the Encyclical and is guided by the seven Laudato Si’ Goals: response to the cry of the Earth, response to the cry of the poor, ecological economy, adoption of a simple lifestyle, ecological education, ecological spirituality, and community commitment with participatory action.

The Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians will participate in the initiative sending to Cardinal Turkson on 14 November 2021, a letter of commitment and the adhesion of the Provinces, Communities, Educational Institutions, Groups, and organizations of the FMA, which  carried out the registration on the Laudato Si’ Initiative Platform.

Adherence to this ecclesial and world process towards integral ecology constitutes a first step in the line of commitment assumed by the FMA Institute during the XXIV General Chapter held in Rome from 17 September to 24 October 2021, with the Deliberation of Conversion to integral ecology:

“The Chapter Assembly allowed itself to be challenged by the cry of the young, the poor, and the earth, and decided to involve the whole Institute in a concrete and continuous journey of conversion to integral ecology, taking on the seven objectives of Laudato si’, in the spirit of the Preventive System”.

By participating in the initiatives of the Laudato Si’ Platform together with the world Catholic community, the Educating Communities of the FMA undertake, according to the different socio-cultural contexts, to commit to the path of ecological conversion according to the spirit of the Salesian charism, trying to integrate each one of the seven Laudato Si’ objectives in personal and community life and to adopt concrete measures that lead to a change in lifestyle and habits, so that young people who are the present and the future, “may have life in abundance”.

“An integral human ecology, involving not only environmental issues but humanity in its entirety, that becomes capable of listening to the cry of the poor and being  leaven for a new society”.

(Pope Francis)