(ANS – Rome) – In the perspective of the care for our common home and in response to the concern for the future of creation, Pope Francis has decided to institute the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which will be celebrated each year on September 1st. The commitment of the Salesians all over the world.
An almost natural sequel to the Pontiff’s Encyclical letter “Laudato si’” (Praise be to You), which is proposed as a further step in the search for a spiritual motivation to the custody of creation to which all Christians are called. In fact, respecting and safeguarding the environment means to thank God“for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live”.
The ecological crisis thus becomes an opportunity for a profound spiritual conversion and for the assumption of consistent styles of living. Insisting on the theme of the environment, Pope Francis manifests his predilection for a more holistic vision, which relates the spirit and the body and all that surrounds them.
This annual celebration wants to be the sign of a journey of reconciliation done together by different Christian denominations: September 1st is also the Day for the Custody of Creation promoted by the Italian Bishops’ Conference, which has now reached its tenth edition. From this year, this will be an ecumenical event, capable of highlighting the ethical and social implications of environmentalism, interweaving them with the themes of justice and peace.
In tune with the intents of Pope Francis and with the Franciscan spirit, Salesians show their commitment to promote, for instance, the right to drinking water for all through the construction of wells in the most arid zones of the planet and in remotest villages like in Ethiopia.
Pope Francis exhorts to pass from a “culture of waste” to a “culture of care”, in order to avoid that our “common Home” be transformed in an immense storage of waste. For instance in Guatemala, a few kilometers from San Pedro Carchá,the entire slope of a hill is occupied by an enormous open sky dump that every day collects 14.6 tons of garbage. Some 60 young men work in this dump, and some of them even live there in metal sheets and cardboard shacks, compelled to live in inhuman environmental, hygienic and social conditions. To help these youth and their families, the Salesians have started an educational project to move them out of this utterly unhealthy place and provide them with food and educational material.
Manifold are also the initiatives of sensitization to ecology that have been set up by the Salesians, such as, for instance, in the context of the activities of the “Lead Children” project, promoted by “Fondazione Don Bosco nel Mondo”, a campaign to reduce environmental pollution, called “Semina Ossigeno” (Sow Oxygen), launched in Porto Nuevo in Peru.
Another challenge the Salesians are facing is that of renewable energies, such as, for instance in India, in the Northeastern state of Assam, where last May 26th the Don Bosco Centre for renewable energies was inaugurated inside the Don Bosco Technical Institute in Maligaon. Other educational programs to instruct the children on the themes of ecology are being implemented since many years in many Salesian institutes all over the world.
Published 28/08/2015
