Human & Nature Suffer Together
This week closes out the Season of Creation, which runs from the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on September 1 to the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (which is October 4). This year, Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew have challenged each of us to hear the cry of the earth and to attend to the needs of the marginalized. Both leaders have warned that the human environment and the natural environment are deteriorating together. This deterioration, they note, weighs most heavily upon the poor and vulnerable.
Bringing us a story to illustrate why responding to this challenge is so critical is Columban lay missionary Lani Tamatawale. Lani has worked as a lay missionary in the Philippines for over a decade. She sat down with the Center’s advocacy coordinator, Becca Eastwood, to share the struggles indigenous communities face when extractive industries exploit their homelands.