We miss caring for creation the way we did before the coronavirus pandemic quarantined much of the world. But there are still plenty of ways we can love our common home.

As major challenges for the global economy are predicted in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a diverse group of faith institutions is putting the call for a just economic recovery into practice.

As the coronavirus pandemic forces us to shut our doors and stay inside longer than we’d like, the Archdiocese of Madrid is asking everyone to open up this Laudato Si’ Week, 16-24 May.

Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, nearly 5,000 Laudato Si’ Animators from all over the world have been coming together every week to learn how we can create a more just and sustainable future.

This Laudato Si’ Week, 16-24 May, the Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and Justice in Canada is inviting Catholics to also make time to listen to each other.

La Universidad Francisco de Vitoria in Madrid will bring Spaniards together during Laudato Si’ Week with an online conference that will focus on the encyclical’s unifying message of caring for creation.

Sandra Iheanacho, a CAFOD volunteer from Westminster diocese, recently travelled to Fatima, Portugal to attend a sustainability camp inspired by Laudato Si’. There she saw Laudato Si’ brought to life and here she talks about her experiences and how every community can get involved.

In disruptive times such as these, that which was already unsustainable is weakened to the point of breaking. We are witnessing minor collapses all over, exposing the frailty and inequalities of the systems we had in place. This crisis exposes “our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules”.

But the most important thing about these experiences is not the action itself, but the commitment that each one of us is assuming in our role as active Christians in society and in relation to caring for the planet, centering our life on the love of God and Creation. For me this is one of the most beautiful messages the Encyclical offers us.

“Laudato Sí” calls us not to be impassive but to be protagonists of a change in our lifestyle, an ecological conversion in which we take care of the Planet and people. A conversion that must begin inside us, recognizing that it is we must sow, care for, start … and then give the best of ourselves to others.