Pope Francis, Vatican launch Laudato Si’ Action Platform

Screenshot of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform website.

One year ago, Pope Francis invited everyone to celebrate the Laudato Si’ Special Anniversary Year. To conclude the year, His Holiness has encouraged all Catholics to take part in a transformational tool that will help the global Catholic family achieve total sustainability this decade.

Pope Francis and the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development recently launched the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. The Vatican-led tool will empower Catholic institutions, communities, and families to implement Laudato Si’.

Watch: Pope Francis invites all Catholics to use the Laudato Si’ Action Platform

“Let’s cultivate respect for the gifts of the Earth and creation, let’s inaugurate a finally eco-sustainable lifestyle and society. We have the opportunity to prepare a better tomorrow for all. From the hands of God we have received a garden, we cannot leave a desert to our children,” Pope Francis said.

Through a seven-year journey, the new platform will guide all Catholics to fully bring Laudato Si’ to life. The platform will host Laudato Si’ Plans that will help institutions, communities, and families implement Laudato Si’, and the tool will provide step-by-step guidance on how all of us can build a better future together.

The official launch of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. (Photo by Marta Isabel González-Vatican Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development-DSSUI)

In addition, the Laudato Si’ Action Platform will offer a plethora of resources and webinars that will walk all Catholics through reaching total sustainability in the spirit of integral ecology, the idea that ecological, cultural, and social issues are intertwined.

Carolina Bianchini, a Laudato Si’ Animator in Italy, helped officially launch the platform during a news conference at the Vatican.

“The Laudato Si’ [Action Platform] shows that the Church is making progress in building the better future that Laudato Si’ calls us to build. People all over the world are looking for hope, and the Laudato Si’ [Action Platform]  provides real hope. As Laudato Si’ says, ‘we know that things can change,’ and this new Vatican program is a concrete sign that things are changing,” she said.

“I renew my urgent appeal, on behalf of the world’s youth, and ask everyone in the Church to use this platform as an opportunity to accelerate commitment and action for our common home. Together we will succeed.”

Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson, Prefect for the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said: “Now more than ever it’s time to act, to do something concrete. We can all change for a just and sustainable future. We must rethink and apply new models; reject questionable life behaviors and engage in new lived realities. We need to recognize our role as ecological citizens and make the world a greener and better place, healthier for us and sustainable for our lives.”

Sr. Sheila Kinsey, a member of the Franciscan Sisters, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, said: “What a time of celebration…  Pope Francis reminds us, ‘All of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents’ (LS 14).”

Fr. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, Head of the Vatican’s Ecology and Creation Office, said: “Our prayer and dream is to initiate ‘a people’s movement from below’ that can really bring about the radical change needed given the urgency of the crisis of our common home… We hope to create the critical mass needed for societal transformation.”

The platform will begin accepting Laudato Si’ Plans later this year and become fully operational, with a complete library of resources, in 2022.