Kevin Hargaden
Kevin Hargaden is the Director and Social Theologian at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice.
Ten years ago, Pope Francis gave the Church and the world a great gift. Laudato Si’ was not just an encyclical. It was a turning point: a summons to conversion, a prophetic warning, and a charter for a new way of inhabiting our common home. The former Minister for the Environment and leader of the Green Party, Eamon Ryan, summarised it well when he declared that it “was of historic significance.”1
When it was published in 2015, it drew praise from climate scientists and Indigenous leaders, theologians and farmers.2 And it still does.3 But perhaps its most enduring contribution is its insistence that the ecological crisis is not just a technical or political issue, but a spiritual one. It is not just about carbon. It is about communion.
This issue of Working Notes was originally conceived to mark the tenth anniversary of Laudato Si’. We had planned a celebration. Then Pope Francis died. Suddenly, the issue has become something more like a vigil. And yet, even in mourning, we find ourselves drawn again to the encyclical that first gave shape to what Francis called “integral ecology.” We return to it not out of nostalgia, but because we know the work is not finished.
Laudato Si’ is now one part of a theological arc that includes Fratelli Tutti and Laudate Deum. This is a body of work that has placed care for the earth and concern for the poor at the heart of the Church’s moral vision. But what made Laudato Si’ unique and what gives it continuing power is how it frames these concerns. The ecological crisis, Francis insists, is not separate from the crisis of inequality. “We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social,” he writes, “but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.”4 Everything is connected.5
These are deceptively simple phrases. And yet they unsettle so many of the assumptions on which modern life is built: the separation of people from place, of economics from ethics, of human beings from the rest of creation. Francis invited us into a deeper logic. It is one drawn from the Franciscan tradition, shaped by Thomistic thought, and refined through the discipline of encounter.6 In doing so, he returned the Church to the margins – not as retreat, but as mission.
This issue gathers reflections that continue that mission. We begin with Peadar Kirby’s rich overview of Pope Francis’ legacy. Kirby sees Francis not just as an institutional reformer, but as a prophet who brought the Church back into the centre of public life. From his early visit to Lampedusa to his final exhortation
Laudate Deum, Francis called us to see climate collapse not only as a technical problem, but as a spiritual and moral emergency. And he lived that call through his style of leadership, his solidarity with the poor, and his choice of words and silences.
In the essays that follow, we see how that call has been heard – and answered – across disciplines, vocations, and terrains.
Davide Dell’Oro, SJ writes as both engineer and theologian, showing how decarbonising our buildings is not merely a technical challenge but a moral imperative. He asks: can the spaces we inhabit become places of sustainability, justice, and care?
We then turn to the bogs of Ireland. “Justice for Peatlands” is a field-note meditation from Mariana Silva, a young ecological engineer whose intellectual formation has been shaped by Laudato Si’. She invites us to see boglands not as wastelands, but as thresholds – between life and death, past and future, science and reverence. Her essay is a model of what integral ecology looks like when lived with boots in the mud and heart in the liturgy.
Judith Russenberger draws the metaphor further. A retired mother and Third Order Franciscan, she writes from the front lines of protest in the UK. For her, protest is not merely political. It is ecological. Just as biodiversity sustains an ecosystem, so articulating your perspective on the critical matters of significance in society – in traditional and more engaged manners – sustains a healthy democracy. Her witness reminds us that peace is not the absence of disruption, but the presence of justice.
Dr Ruby Alemu adds a vital theological critique. In her essay, “Reflections from An Animal Theologian,” she explores what Laudato Si’ omits: the ethical and theological status of nonhuman animals. Why, she asks, are the moral implications of animal agriculture absent from Catholic Social Teaching, even in a document as radical as Laudato Si’? Her call is not for purity, but for clarity. Through her eyes we see a Church that recognises the cries not only of the poor, but of all creatures.
And then, from a different angle, Frank Brady, SJ leads us home. In an interview filled with warmth, memory, and wisdom, he speaks of the Irish language not as heritage but as ecosystem. He shows how language, like land, needs tending. That tending happens in classrooms, kitchens, and pubs. It happens in song and sacrament. In Frank’s witness, the revival of Irish becomes a case study in what Pope Francis calls “cultural ecology.”7 To lose a language is to lose a way of seeing the world. To preserve it is an act of resistance, and of hope.
Together, these essays remind us that Laudato Si’ stands at its tenth birthday as an invitation and a provocation to reflection and to action.
Ten years on, the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are louder. Our politics are more divided. Our climate is more volatile. Yet our call remains the same. The work of integral ecology is not just about systems. It is about spirit. It is about justice. And it is about joy.
Pope Francis is gone. Through writings like Laudato Si’, his wisdom endures. And he would want us to remember that much more important than any document are the communities, vocations, and imaginations it inspired. May they be guided wisely and powerfully by his successor, Leo XIV.
And may this issue honour his legacy. We hope it points, quietly and resolutely, toward the world he helped bring into view.
Footnotes
- Eamon Ryan, ‘Eamon Ryan: Here’s a Job for the next Pope. DelivernUs from Climate Apathy’, The Irish Times, 6 May 2025, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/05/06/eamon-ryan-heres-a-job-for-thenext-pope-deliver-us-from-climate-apathy/. ↩︎
- Quirin Schiermeier, ‘Why the Pope’s Letter on Climate Change Matters’, Nature, 18 June 2015, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2015.17800. ↩︎
- Patricia Gualinga, ‘Laudato Si’ Validates Centuries of Indigenous Knowledge to Defend Nature’, National Catholic Reporter, 5 June 2020, https://www.ncronline.org/earthbeat/politics/laudato-si-validatescenturies-indigenous-knowledge-defend-nature. ↩︎
- Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ (Vatican City: Vatican, 2015), §139. ↩︎
- Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti (Assisi: Vatican, 2020), §34. ↩︎
- Vincent J. Miller, ed., The Theological and Ecological Vision of Laudato Si’: Everything Is Connected (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017). ↩︎
- Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §143–46. ↩︎
