Philippine Catholic church launches nat'l program for environmental care

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines announced Thursday the launching on Wednesday of the Church's environmental consciousness program inspired by Pope Francis' encyclical on the care of creation "Laudato Si." 

In a release sent to media, CBCP Inter-Commission Working Group (ICWG) on Laudato Si said that the program aims to strengthen the collective advocacies and actions to “care of our common home.”

ICWG's release quoted Caritas Internationalis president Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as saying, “The Laudato Si encyclical is not just a ‘green rhetoric,’ it is a document that requires us to do ecological conversion, conversion to ecological justice, and action.”

Thus when the CBCP decided unanimously to push for a national Laudato Si program, “we are bringing faith to the transformation of society and the care for creation,” added Cardinal Tagle.

In 2019 during the CBCP Plenary Assembly, the bishops issued a statement pushing for ten concrete action points, including the implementation of a National Laudato Si Program, to significantly contribute to the Philippine environment protection efforts, especially in the light of devastating and more frequent natural disasters.

In a message, CBCP president Archbishop Romulo Valles said, “As a Bishop, I have experienced the local scenarios of the global environmental problems that Laudato Si has pointed out to us. Davao City has been experiencing terrible flooding displacing thousands of families, even at one time, with scores of lives lost. Thus during the CBCP Plenary in January, we unanimously decided to act on the urgency of climate emergency.”

The 2021 Global Climate Risk Index showed that Philippines ranked 4th on the list of countries most affected by climate risks. Just last year, at least five strong typhoons hit the country causing tremendous devastation amounting to “P90 billion output loses, or an equivalent to a reduction to the full-year GDP by 0.15 percent, according to NEDA report.”

For his part, Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo, head of the Episcopal Commission on Social Action, Justice and Peace, said “Such amount can easily provide homes to 600 hundred thousand Filipino families. That is why the Catholic Church is really adamant to strategically unify all our efforts to respond to the climate emergency, and complement the efforts of our government and the private sector to protect the Philippine environment.”

“Convening the key commissions of the CBCP signals our serious concern to bring to the public’s attention the need for collective advocacies and actions to curb the effects of climate change, added Fr. John Leydon, chairperson of the Global Catholic Climate Movement (GCCM)-Pilipinas.

With Caritas Philippines and GCCM (Global Climate Chemistry Model) – Pilipinas in the inter-commission working group are the episcopal commissions on youth, indigenous peoples, clergy, laity, bible apostolate, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenical affairs, and Basic Ecclesial Communities. —LBG, GMA News