“I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all” (Laudato Si’, No. 14).

Ten years ago, when Laudato Si’ was promulgated, I was struck by these words of Pope Francis. This was not because Francis was the first pontiff to comment on the importance of the environment, but because of their boldness and how neatly they encapsulated both the purpose of the encyclical and the pontifical style of Pope Francis. He has focused, time and again, on the idea of dialogue, of conversation, of encountering. Specifically, he has centered his teaching on the fundamental encounter with Jesus Christ, to whom all Christians are called to be saved from sin and death, as the Second Vatican Council document Dei Verbum proclaims of the Gospel.

This divine experience is witnessed throughout the Gospels, wherein people find themselves utterly transformed by their encounter with Jesus Christ again and again. Take, for example, Zacchaeus the tax collector (Lk 19:1-10), the man born blind (Jn 9:1-41), the leper whom Christ cleansed (Mt 8:1-4) or the centurion whose servant was healed (Mt 8:5-13). Although not everyone who meets Christ believes in him, all those who encounter him are permanently changed. However, Christ has never left us; he continues to call us to conversion, to love, to compassion. But we on earth can often miss God himself crying out to us as we go about our daily business.

“When we go into the street, every man thinks of himself: he sees, but does not look; he hears, but does not listen,” Pope Francis observed in a meditation in 2016. As the pope has keenly noticed, modern man has become grievously wounded by a deep disconnection with his community and thereby his environment. Caught up on multiple sides, the modern man is pushed to fill the existential void, which only God can satisfy, with things such as technology, the newest fashions and superficial trends built to be bought, used and tossed. In many ways, the “throwaway culture” which defines the modern age has become a slavery rather than a liberation. As Pope Francis says, “Our freedom fades when it is handed over to the blind forces of the unconscious, of immediate needs, of self-interest and of violence” (Laudato Si’, No. 105). The vicissitudes caused by this constant pursuit of “the new and improved” have become glaringly obvious, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and recent political cycles both at home and abroad.

Urgent but Not Hopeless

Francis repeated his message in the 2023 apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum, in which he reflects on what has happened since he first promulgated Laudato Si’. This was written because the call to action in Laudato Si’ needed reinforcement for several reasons — the most important of which was the failure of nations, international bodies and corporations to make meaningful changes in the years between the two documents.

It cannot be denied that both humanitarian and natural disasters are occurring in the United States and abroad with an increasing regularity and severity. We need not look further than the past year to recognize this. 

In 2024-25 we experienced Hurricane Helene in Appalachia; wildfires in California and Chile; tropical storm Trami in the Philippines; flooding and landslides in Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Spain and Ethiopia; heatwaves in Saudi Arabia; and so on and so forth. The situation grows more dire by the day, but there seems to be little in the way of resolving it.

But let us not be hopeless. We know, ultimately, that the most effective solutions to the global climate crisis need to come from international bodies, national governments and multinational corporations, who do, in fact, work to address these problems. For effective solutions to come about, however, there needs to be a tidal shift in modern culture.

If we are to dig deep enough to root out the evils that affect us, it will take significant time and, in some cases, monumental effort. Exploitative economic systems and market trends did not appear overnight, and they will not disappear in a decade. However, as Francis informs us, “there are no cultural changes without personal changes” (Laudate Deum, No. 70). We cannot underestimate the power of one crying out in the wilderness (Is 40:3) proclaiming the will of God. Each of us must take personally the responsibility for the care of his creation, as it has been entrusted to us since the first man and woman stood upon it (Gn 2:15).

Building a New Culture

This idea — that each of us has a part to play in God’s plan for creation and that each of us must do our utmost to understand his will — is the heart of Francis’ “ecological conversion” (Laudato Si’, No. 217 ) It is a new yet ancient agrarian perspective on the familiar pattern of the Gospel and our call to conversion in Christ Jesus. As Francis says, “Efforts by households to reduce pollution and waste, and to consume with prudence, are creating a new culture” (Laudate Deum , No. 71). New habits, built on virtue, help to produce within us new attitudes that promote the common good. This is because as we come to know God, we come to know ourselves and can thus come to know one another in an ongoing process of encounter. Indeed, “We become ourselves only to the extent that we acquire the ability to acknowledge others, while only those who can acknowledge and accept themselves are then able to encounter others” (Dilexit Nos, No. 18 ).

As has been said in many places, real liberty comes not from the ability to dispose of ourselves and the world around us wantonly or merely as we desire. Rather, it is necessary for us to take on the responsibility of stewardship, of self-restraint, if we are to authentically develop into the fullness of the person God wishes us to be. And this exercise, by necessity, includes creation itself, because man is not extraneous to creation; he is intrinsically united to it through the incarnation of the human soul. Thus we cannot remove man from the setting of his existence, nor the setting from man’s influence upon it. This is integral ecology, which “includes taking time to recover a serene harmony with creation, reflecting on our lifestyle and our ideals, and contemplating the Creator who lives among us and surrounds us” (Laudato Si’, No. 225) — a Creator who is not designed in a lab nor manufactured in a mill, but who is discovered through the divine mystery of life itself.

A Labor of Love

Ten years ago, Laudato Si’ gave us a new yet ancient insight into our relationship with each other, with God, with ourselves, with our world, with work itself, with technology, with the economy and more. Reading through the encyclical and Francis’ later writings, it can be easy to become lost amid the wide-ranging issues and seemingly intractable nature of the problems he describes. Yet, for as complex and as confusing as the world may be, the answer that comes out of Laudato Si’ is clear and simple: “We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it” (No. 229).

Fundamentally, what Francis has been saying, and continues to preach, is that we need to remember what it means to be in communion with one another. In our own lives, in the lives of our friends, family, parish and diocese, we cannot lose sight of the Gospel. We cannot lose sight of Jesus the Christ, who shines in our hearts and minds as lumen gentium, the light of the nations. The urgency of Pope Francis’ appeal for a “new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet” remains with us today and always, for it is the urgency with which we are called to spread the Gospel.

All of us who have been baptized and sealed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit have been given a demanding task. We have been given a gold coin which we must invest in our fellow man (Lk 19:11-27). We cannot shirk away from the world; we are called to be in it. Called to till the earth and to keep it (Gn 2:15), we find that Christ’s exhortation to love one another as he has loved us (Jn 13:34) consists of a holistic social ethic that touches upon every aspect of our lives and the life of our planet. It calls for constant renewal, as the earth renews itself from winter into spring, from summer into autumn. It calls for a constant encounter, as the sea crashes upon the rock, as the wind whips up the desert sands. We must be forgiving and firm, gentle yet stern. Like the wilderness itself, we must rely totally on God to be fully alive. And, though we may never know the fruits of our labors, the labor of love is itself the prize, for God is love, and all who live in love live in God (1 Jn 4:8).

R.J. MANGAN is Director of Peace and Justice for the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio. He holds a Master of Theological Studies from the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College.