A Celebration of Laudato Si’ - 10 years on

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ – On the Care of Our Common Home, a special joint event was held on 4 June 2025 by the Southern Dioceses Environment Network and the Northern Dioceses Environment Group. Marking a milestone in the Church’s environmental advocacy, the gathering was hosted by Colette Joyce (Westminster) and Mark Wiggin (Salford), with prayers led by Bernadette Jordan (Salford) and Siân Thomas-Cullinan (Brentwood). You can watch the recording of the event here.

The keynote speaker for the occasion was Austen Ivereigh, a prominent Catholic writer, journalist, and papal biographer with close ties to Pope Francis. He invited attendees to reflect on the journey since the encyclical’s release in 2015, which had spurred Catholics and people of all faiths into action for environmental justice. Quoting Laudato Si’, he reminded the audience of Pope Francis’s powerful call to “hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” a message that continues to inspire action today.

Austen introduced the SEE-JUDGE-ACT framework as a means of engaging with the ecological and social crises of our time. He outlined how Pope Francis invites us to first witness the pain of our planet, then discern the forces at play—both divine and obstructive—and finally to act boldly in alignment with the values of the Kingdom of God. This approach, he suggested, offers both a spiritual and practical roadmap for meaningful change.

The session concluded with a call to deepen our engagement with the Laudato Si’ apostolate by embracing its threefold mission: to help communities see the degradation of our common home, to understand its roots through prayerful reflection, and to act through synodal processes that lead to real, local transformation. For those seeking a detailed account, a full report by Ellen Teague is available on Independent Catholic News.