How Lent offers the chance to express care for creation
Caring for God’s creation will form a significant part of Christian reflection during Lent next month with numerous seminars, vigils and other opportunities to learn about and understand effective climate action.
Christian Climate Action is planning a “No Faith in Fossil Fuels” 24-hour vigil outside the UK Parliament, starting on Ash Wednesday on 14 February and continuing for 10 days. “Lent offers us space to lament our failure to address the climate emergency, and as we approach the Easter season of renewal, we hope and strive for climate justice,” said a Christian Climate Action spokesperson. “We endeavour for our prayers to be participatory – moving us into action and calling on our politicians to make the changes needed.”
Specific asks of the vigil include, making the UK’s biggest polluters pay for climate action, delivering on the UK’s international climate finance pledges and paying into the UN’s Loss and Damage Fund, as well as calling for a ban on new UK-based fossil fuel projects. The vigil will be a relay, where people take it in turns to participate for a period of time across the 10 days. Activists are invited to bring church groups, family and friends. It will be launched with an Ash Wednesday Church Service at St Johns Church, Waterloo and brought to a close with a service outside Downing Street.
Environmental campaigners have been celebrating as Ripon Cathedral has paused a project involving tree-felling. The cathedral’s plans to fell 11 mature beech trees have been temporarily put on hold after protests.
Local campaigner, Jenni Holman, who organised the petition against the proposal, said: “The process of challenging plans to build an annexe on Minster Gardens has been a long one – not only to try to stop the unnecessary felling of a number of beautiful mature trees, but also to raise awareness of the project within the city.”
Online, Catholics in the UK are expected to be interested in a new joint diploma in integral ecology launched by the Pontifical universities in Rome. The online course supports the work of Pope Francis on Creation Care and offers the opportunity to engage with leading Catholics in the field of Creation Care.
Fr P. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam SDB, who works on ecology in the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, is chair of philosophy of science at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome and who attended the Glasgow climate talks where many of UK Christian activists met him face to face, is keen that the course is shared with a UK audience. He told The Tablet: “In the current era of planetary emergency, we, Christians, are challenged more than ever in our sacred duty to protect life in all forms and everywhere, and care for God's creation.” He called for “a mass movement of people from below for the care of our common home and one another”.
The course will consist of six modules of 90 minutes each, to be held from January to June 2024, on every third Thursday of the month. There will also be a workshop in March and an international on-line conference on Laudate Deum in May. The course will be officially inaugurated on 25 January, but admissions will remain open up to 31 March 2024.
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