Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home

Pope Francis has released the highly anticipated papal encyclical focused on the environment. Challenging all people to be aware of the suffering in the world so that action can be taken:

Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.

The encyclical links environmental degradation with social plights positioning both within a moral argument for action, action that must reach across all disciplines of science and forms of wisdom:

If we are truly concerned to develop an ecology capable of remedying the damage we have done, no branch of the sciences and no form of wisdom is to be left out, and the includes religion and the language particular to it.

Unsurprisingly, the encyclical has received widespread coverage and commentary. The full encyclical can be read here, below are links to a few articles responding to the teaching document. If you know of other articles that should be shared, please include a link in the comment section below.

The pope’s encyclical on climate change -as it happened | Andy Vaughan | June 18, 2015 | The Guardian

On Planet in Distress, a Papal Call to Action | Laurie Goodstien and Justin Gillis | June 18, 2015 | The New York Times

The Papal Encyclical: Taking Umbrage | Robert Walker | June 18, 2015 | The Huffington Post

The Pope’s Political Earthquake | Ted Widmer | June 19, 2015 | Politico Magazine

How Climate Change Deniers Lost a Papal Fight | Anthony Faiola and Chris Mooney | June 20, 2015 | The Washington Post

Pope Francis a liberal free thinker? Don’t kid yourself | Nick Cohen | June 20, 2015 | The Guardian