Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home

Ten Years ago, Pope Francis published Laudato Si to help turn the attention of the Church to the environmental crisis. However, he also drew the not always so clear connection between the environment and the poor and argued that the sphere of nature and the sphere of the social are connected. Pope Francis developed the term Integral Ecology to emphasize the connection. He wanted us to better understand that our behavior towards the poor has impacts on the environment and, like a negative feedback loop, he argues, a neglected environment further subjugates the poor. He also highlighted the strong influence technological solutions hold over the imaginations of those who seek a better world. As if the only way to out of the crisis is more advanced technology. However, this technocratic paradigm that only sees technical solutions fails to recognize its own propensity to pollute and discard what it does not deem useful. The technocratic paradigm only furthers the environmental crisis because it never sees the value of nature as it's own good, but always an object to be manipulated and subjected to the comforts and whims of the human will. This attitude informs what Pope Francis called the "throwaway culture" that reduces everything including the human body to a mere tool to be used and cast aside once it usefulness ceases. With an Integral Ecology we can better recognize these dynamics between the social and the environment and begin to heal by living in harmony within our home that is the body, and with all other human beings and creatures within our Common Home.

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Audiobook: 28 maja 2025