To celebrate three occasions — the worldwide Jubilee 2025; the 10th anniversary of the 2015 release of Pope Francis’ landmark environmental encyclical “Laudato Si'”; and the annual ecumenical Season of Creation Sept. 1-Oct. 4 — Catholics across America have committed themselves to spiritual expeditions not on the well-worn pilgrimage routes of Europe but in their own communities.
Season of Creation
Beneath the sprawling branches of surrounding trees, Gretchen Day can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. She has always found God in his creation, the Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church parishioner said — in the plants, the animals, all those things the Creator declared “good.” So, when she has opportunities to care for the Earth, she does; and that commitment led her to the Green Team.
Eight centuries ago, St. Francis of Assisi composed a poem that remains familiar today, inspiring hymns, art, and the titles of two of the late Pope Francis’ teaching documents on integral ecology.
Participating in the ecumenical Season of Creation, Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intention for the month of September is “for our relationship with all of creation.”
Two months after celebrating a new Mass “for the care of creation,” Pope Leo XIV will return to Castel Gandolfo to formally inaugurate Borgo Laudato Si’, a place of education, ecology, and spirituality in the papal summer estate.