
Issue: 98: Laudato Si': Ten Years on
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.” Everything is connected.


Pope Francis and his papacy: A turning point in Christian history?

Buildings and climate change: How building decarbonisation can help mitigate climate change

Justice for Peatlands: field notes from a Catholic ecological engineering PhD researcher

The Importance of a Healthy Ecology of Protest

Laudato Si’, Ten Years On: Reflections from An Animal Theologian
