Rome (Italy). In the month of September in which it is celebrated the Season of Creation – on the 800th anniversary of the Canticle of the Creatures of Saint Francis of Assisi and on the 10th anniversary of the encyclical Laudato Si’ – “For our relationship with all creation” is the prayer intention that Pope Leo XIV entrusts to the Catholic Church through the Pope’s World Prayer Network, who on this occasion was able to count on the support of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development:
Let us pray that, inspired by Saint Francis, we can experience our interdependence with all creatures, loved by God and worthy of love and respect.
In the unpublished prayer that he recites in the video, the continuity with the magisterium of Pope Francis, author of the encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015), is highlighted in a special way in the reference to Saint Francis:
Lord, you love all that you have created,
and nothing exists outside the mystery of Your tenderness.
Every creature, no matter how small,
is the fruit of Your love and has a place in this world.
Even the simplest or shortest life is surrounded by Your care.
Like Saint Francis of Assisi, today we too want to say:
“Praised be to You, O my Lord!”
Through the beauty of creation,
You reveal Yourself as the source of goodness. We ask You:
open our eyes to recognize You,
learning from the mystery of Your closeness to all creation
that the world is infinitely more than a problem to be solved.
It is a mystery to be contemplated with gratitude and hope.
Help us discover Your presence in all of creation,
so that, fully recognizing it,
we may feel and know our responsibility for this common home
in which You invite us to cherish, respect, and protect
life in all its forms and possibilities.
Praise be to you, Lord! Amen.
The Franciscan angle also emerges from some images contained in the documentary St. Francis of Assisi – Sign of Contradiction, and donated to the Pope’s World Prayer Network by the US production company 10th Hour Production.
The anniversary of Laudato Si’ is instead present through some shots of the Mass celebrated last July 9 by Leo XIV in the “natural cathedral” – as he defined it in his homily – of Borgo Laudato Si’ in Castel Gandolfo: a Eucharist according to the formulary of the Mass for the Custody of Creation added by the Pontiff to the Roman Missal precisely on the occasion of the ten years since the encyclical of Pope Francis.
Pope Leo, in the Message for the World Day for the Care of Creation 2025, hopes that the Encyclical Laudato si’, which has accompanied the Catholic Church and many people of good will for ten years, “will continue to inspire us and integral ecology will be increasingly chosen and shared as a course to follow. Thus, the seeds of hope will multiply, to be ‘guarded and cultivated’ with the grace of our great and unfailing Hope, the Risen Christ.”
