Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Laudato Si

  • ENVIRONMENT

    God in a time of threat

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 October 2023
    3 Comments

    Pope Francis' latest Exhortation 'Laudate Deum,' is an evocative sequel to 'Laudato Si’, juxtaposing the urgency of our environmental predicament with the fragility of human hope. Before the upcoming COP28 conference, as nations teeter between action and inertia, the Pope's message is clear: our shared environment, and the most vulnerable among us, hang in the balance.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    On budgets, popes and thinking local

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 May 2023
    1 Comment

    When exploring the ties between Federal Budget week and Laudato Si’ Week, it becomes clear there's an urgency to address economic inequality and climate change as a single, intricately linked problem. While the latest budget promises minor benefits, it lacks robust measures to tackle these major issues. 

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Fratelli Tutti: seeking the common good

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 October 2020
    47 Comments

    Pope Francis’ latest encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti is, as we might have anticipated, a reflection on our times. The burden of the encyclical is to commend fraternity and social friendship and deplore selfishness and hostility in the response to the crisis.

    READ MORE
  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Social services, Laudato Si’ and Jack Mundey’s legacy

    • Joshua Lourensz
    • 22 May 2020
    6 Comments

    In thinking through how social services can contribute to what society or the economy needs in light of the ramifications of COVID-19, Catholicism and communism are not two traditions that probably come to the mind for most. But for the kind of thinking that governance and leaders require to make good decisions in and beyond a time of crisis, there are people and concepts from each tradition that we can learn from.

    READ MORE
  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Social justice is not a spectator sport

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 February 2020
    5 Comments

    Catholic reflection on social justice has been supercharged by Pope Francis, who in his encyclical Laudato Si declared the Cry of the Poor and the Cry of the Earth to be central to faith. He also insisted that neither could be addressed simply by technological fixes but required personal conversion to see the world as gift to be respected, a home, and not as a prison or a mine.

    READ MORE
  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Economy v environment is no zero-sum game

    • Daniel Nour
    • 15 April 2019

    We've witnessed this confluence of economic opportunity with aid and development in Indonesia, where our support of local eco-tourism has revived communities with self-sustaining employment opportunities while preserving local rainforests from being felled for wood.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    In dialogue with Francis' eco manifesto

    • Jacqui Remond
    • 23 February 2018
    9 Comments

    Dialogue plays a role in how we create meaning. When we have true dialogue we create a flow of meaning: between us, and between us and everything around us. Laudato Si' invites us to be mindful of the dialogue that's happening at a human level, at a cosmic level, and with the creator God.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Pope calls for intellectual conversion over climate

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 June 2017
    10 Comments

    The strident public debate about global warming and the threat it poses has died down. Few knowledgeable people deny its reality. At the same time, powerful interest groups and politicians appeal to the need for economic growth in order to weaken any international commitment. At such a time it is worth returning to Laudato Si, Pope Francis' passionate exhortation to care for the environment. Its most significant insight is that the environment is not something outside ourselves. We are part of it.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Laudato Si and the Australian election

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 22 June 2016
    23 Comments

    It is now 12 months since Pope Francis issued his environmental encyclical Laudato Si'. He opined, 'Although the post-industrial period may well be remembered as one of the most irresponsible in history, nonetheless there is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of the 21st century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsibilities.' Where are the Australian politicians who can give hope to the coming generation by focusing our attention on this most urgent issue?

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The moral conundrum of casting a vote on 2 July

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 June 2016
    46 Comments

    Sadly, the major political parties have forfeited any claim to govern in their own right because they have caused such disillusionment among so many voters about other policy issues with strong moral overtones. Any voter impressed with Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si' or inspired by his visits to asylum seekers on the islands of Lampedusa and Lesbos could not blithely vote for either of the major parties, without first determining how to place some continuing political and moral pressure on them.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Pope Francis' hope for our poor earth

    • Paul Fyfe
    • 11 December 2015
    2 Comments

    Twenty years ago I was hopeful that countries would take strong and sensible action to address climate change, just as we had in 1987 when we faced the major depletion of the ozone layer. The following years slowly erased this hope. The Church did not do enough to stem disappointment, or to affirm that 'stewardship' alone was not going to provide sufficient grounds for the needed changes. By 2010 I was resigned to devastation. But Pope Francis has provided me with a ray of hope.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Discerning the place for the churches in the great moral questions of the age

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 November 2015
    2 Comments

    'The crisis of child sexual abuse in our societies has required that our institutional procedures be more transparent and that we learn from the ways of the world in exercising power openly and justly. This means we have to restructure some of our church arrangements so that power is exercised accountably and transparently. All of us who have positions of influence and power in institutional churches need to be attentive to the voices of those who have suffered within our institutions.' 'Discerning the place for the prophetic voice and pragmatic cooperation of the churches in the great moral questions of the age', address to the Association of Practical Theology in Oceania conference, 26 November 2015.

    READ MORE