EarthBeat

When my daughter told me recycling was a "white mom thing," I knew I was missing the mark on teaching her about why God calls us to care for creation. Here are 5 things I'm now doing differently.

Priests can now celebrate Mass "for the care of creation" after the Vatican announced that a new formulary of prayers and biblical readings for the Mass will be added to the Roman Missal. Pope Leo XIV will use the formulary July 9.

Following Pope Francis' teachings on integral ecology must be accepted as "the right path to follow," the pope said in his message for the 2025 World Day of Prayer for Creation.

The 34-page letter sounding the alarm on climate change is the first-ever joint appeal issued by the continental conferences of Catholic bishops in Latin America, Africa and Asia, representing 821 million Catholics.

Cardinal Stephen Brislin said amid the threats of climate change that experts say is being fast-tracked by global warming brought about by carbon emissions, there is renewed hope for environmental and climate change awareness among young people in South Africa.

It's perhaps not the sort of 10th anniversary commemoration supporters of Pope Francis' landmark environmental encyclical Laudato Si' would hope for: That its auspicious June 18, 2015, publication date would 10 years later coincide with proposals by Congress to defund America's clean energy investments and pollution reduction programs, sell public lands to industry, establish legal permitting detours for potential polluters, and eliminate federal subsidies for energy-efficient technologies, among other not-so-green actions.

Continued engagement with the Vatican-sponsored Laudato Si' Action Platform suggests persistence of Catholic ecological efforts after Pope Francis' death and into the second decade since Laudato Si' was published.