We are called to be stew­ards of cre­ation, which has been en­trust­ed to our care. We are in the sec­ond week of the Sea­son of Cre­ation - Sep­tem­ber 1 to Oc­to­ber 4, the Feast of St Fran­cis of As­sisi. This is a glob­al ec­u­meni­cal call to prayer/ac­tion to care for our com­mon home. St. Paul’s Let­ter to the Colos­sians (1:16), states that all things in heav­en and on earth, vis­i­ble and in­vis­i­ble, were cre­at­ed through Je­sus Christ and for Him.

In St Paul’s Let­ter to the Ro­mans, “the bib­li­cal im­age pic­tures the Earth as a Moth­er, groan­ing as in child­birth (Rom 8:22). Fran­cis of As­sisi un­der­stood this when he re­ferred to the Earth as our sis­ter and our moth­er in his Can­ti­cle of Crea­tures. The times we live in show that we are not re­lat­ing to the Earth as a gift from our Cre­ator...” (The Catholic Bish­ops of Eng­land and Wales).

In 1989 the Ec­u­meni­cal Pa­tri­arch Dim­itrios in­vit­ed the en­tire Chris­t­ian world to of­fer every year on Sep­tem­ber 1, “prayers and sup­pli­ca­tions to the Mak­er of all, both as thanks­giv­ing for the great gift of Cre­ation and as pe­ti­tions for its pro­tec­tion and sal­va­tion.” Thus be­gan the process of the in­sti­tu­tion of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Cre­ation—en­dorsed by Pope Fran­cis in 2015, who named Sep­tem­ber, the Sea­son of Cre­ation.

2026 marks the 11th an­niver­sary of Pope Fran­cis’ land­mark en­cycli­cal Lauda­to Si’, a call for hu­man­i­ty to “care for our com­mon home”. Pope Leo XIV’s Mes­sage on the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Cre­ation this year, is worth read­ing. His theme re­flects the bib­li­cal call to “beat swords in­to plow­shares”.

He con­nects armed con­flict with en­vi­ron­men­tal de­struc­tion. In­ter alia, he says: “Our Lord Je­sus Christ came so that we might have life and have it in abun­dance (cf Jn 10:10). This gift of life lies at the very heart of our mis­sion as dis­ci­ples and of our shared call­ing to build a civ­i­liza­tion of love... we are once again in­vit­ed to con­tem­plate the gift of life and to cher­ish the earth that sus­tains it, for they are tan­gi­ble ways of of­fer­ing praise to our Cre­ator.

“To­day, we are wit­ness­ing many crises and much hu­man suf­fer­ing. At the same time, it seems that the dis­rup­tion to the har­mo­nious bal­ance of cre­ation is ac­cel­er­at­ing. These phe­nom­e­na are not un­re­lat­ed; they are a sin­gle plea for heal­ing and peace aris­ing from a wound­ed world...the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween armed con­flicts and en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion of­ten cre­ates a vi­cious cy­cle, which de­stroys ecosys­tems, con­t­a­m­i­nates es­sen­tial re­sources, such as air and wa­ter, and un­der­mines food se­cu­ri­ty. This fu­els pover­ty, in­equal­i­ty, and new so­cial ten­sions that can con­tribute to the emer­gence of fur­ther con­flicts.”

On Sep­tem­ber 2, the In­ter­na­tion­al The­o­log­i­cal Com­mis­sion (ITC), pub­lished a doc­u­ment with the au­tho­ri­sa­tion of Pope Leo XIV. It is en­ti­tled “Car­ing for Our Com­mon Home – A Re­spon­si­ble and Fra­ter­nal Re­sponse to the Tri­une God”. At the heart of the doc­u­ment is the ques­tion: How can hu­man­i­ty re­spond, from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, to the “eco­log­i­cal and so­cial cri­sis” in­to which it has fall­en, a cri­sis that is “short-sight­ed and sui­ci­dal”?

“The eco­log­i­cal ques­tion is a the­o­log­i­cal ques­tion: the way we care for Cre­ation re­veals and shapes our re­la­tion­ship with God. The de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment is alarm­ing and ur­gent ac­tion is need­ed to en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the plan­et. Every­thing is con­nect­ed: we must lis­ten to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” (Vat­i­can News). Car­ing for Cre­ation is a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The doc­u­ment calls on in­sti­tu­tions, sci­ence, civ­il so­ci­ety and re­li­gions to col­lab­o­rate to ef­fect change. It con­cludes with a per­spec­tive of Chris­t­ian hope.

While urg­ing gov­ern­ments to en­act bet­ter cli­mate poli­cies, let’s play our part to de­vel­op right re­la­tion­ships with God, neigh­bour and cre­ation. When one of these re­la­tion­ships is wound­ed, the oth­ers are af­fect­ed.