Praise Be to You: On Care for Our Common Home

In his second encyclical, Praise Be to You, Pope Francis addresses “every person living on this planet,” inviting us to dialogue together about the urgent environmental challenges facing the earth—our common home—and how we can work together protect its fragile resources. He challenges us to think of ecology not merely in terms of the environment, but in light of our fundamental relationships: with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the rest of creation.

Caring for our common home involves what Pope Francis calls an “ecological conversion.” In other words, because taking care of the earth is intertwined with taking care of one another, our encounter with Jesus Christ should be evident in our relationship with the world around us. To Pope Francis this is not be something secondary or optional; we are called to be protectors of the earth, and this is an essential part of loving our neighbor and living a life of goodness.

Praise Be to You is a worldwide wake-up call to experience a deeper change of heart and a new way of life as together we shape the future of our planet.