Pope’s emphasis on care for creation spurs work in environmental advocacy
John Mundell, a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Indianapolis, greets Pope Francis during a June 2024 meeting at the Vatican. He serves as the global director of the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform. (Submitted photo)
By Sean Gallagher
On March 13, 2013, John Mundell was driving to his home in Indianapolis from South Bend, Ind., when he heard the news that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires had been elected pope and had taken the name Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi.
“My heart literally jumped out of my body as tears came to my eyes while pulling over to the nearest parking lot,” Mundell recalled. “I got out with the car still running, jumping up and down while circling the car with fists pumping over my head.”
He had such a strong reaction because, at that moment, he “had this deep feeling that something wonderful was going to happen as a result of this name of the new pope.”
By that time, Mundell had worked as an environmental consultant for about 30 years. He had also, as a member of the Catholic lay movement Focolare, been involved with the Church at the local, national and international levels in efforts to create a more just society and economy for people in need.
But his passion for the care of creation had not been brought into the mix.
Now, with the name of a saint so well known for his love of creation being taken by the new pope, Mundell thought that he might in the future be able to bring his faith and his knowledge of environmental science together in service to the Church.
Little did he know just how much he’d be called to do.
Almost as soon as Pope Francis issued his encyclical letter “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home” in 2015, Mundell, at first through Focolare, started working with various Vatican officials and leaders in faith communities, businesses, education and governments around the world in seeking to implement the principles of the teaching document.
In 2022, Mundell was appointed the global director of the Holy See’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform, an organization that helps individuals and organizations around the world take concrete action in caring for creation.
“I had a premonition that something was going to happen that may involve the work I was doing,” said Mundell, a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Indianapolis. “But I never thought that I would be involved at this level.”
Mundell is one among many people across central and southern Indiana whose lives have been shaped during the past 12 years by Pope Francis’ development of the Church’s teachings on the care for creation and its connection to the care for those in need.
Parishes, schools and religious communities across the archdiocese have taken actions since the issuing of “Laudato Si’ ” to make care for creation a part of the ordinary way they operate, encouraging other communities and individuals along the way to do the same.
Mundell, Benedictine Sister Sheila Marie Fitzpatrick and Franciscan Sister Susan Marie Pleiss recently spoke with The Criterion about these efforts and the effect that Pope Francis had on bringing faith together with environmental advocacy.
‘A paradigm shift’
Sister Susan Marie credits her parents for instilling in her more than 50 years ago a passion for care for creation.
“[They] were both avid gardeners, recyclers, and champions of public spaces like parks,” she recalled. “I still remember marching down the street with a homemade sign as a seventh-grader at Immaculate Conception School in Dayton, Ohio, on the very first Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970.”
In her life as a member of the Oldenburg Franciscans, Sister Susan Marie had long been involved in her community’s Care of Creation Task Force, promoting a range of initiatives to further respect for the environment.
But when Pope Francis issued “Laudato Si’,” a “paradigm shift” occurred for her when she saw the pope connect “care for the Earth with care for the poor.”
She quoted the pope’s encyclical to shed light on this: “We have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” (#49).
Sister Susan Marie looks to youths and young adults to put further into action in the years to come the pope’s principles on care for creation.
“I have great hope that young people around the world will lead us toward the kinds of fundamental societal shifts in harmful patterns of consumption, especially in the developed world, that have led to the degradation of our common home,” she said. “I believe Pope Francis’ teachings on integral ecology, especially within “Laudato Si’ ”, will one day be looked upon as part of the ‘great turning’ when enough people woke up to the global ecological crisis to actually begin to make significant and lasting changes in their lifestyles.”
Learning a new language
Sister Sheila Marie, a member of Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Been Grove, also had a love for the care of creation planted in her heart from a young age. And it was a desire she brought with her when she entered religious life.
“I looked immediately for ways that the community conserved and sought out new ways that I could help,” she said. “When like-minded people from different organizations and churches in the city came together, I wanted to take part.”
That led Sister Sheila Marie to become a member of the archdiocese’s Care of Creation Ministry, which was formed after the issuing of “Laudato Si’.”
The encyclical, and the pope’s 2023 apostolic exhortation on the climate crisis, “Laudate Deum,” gave Sister Sheila Marie “the language that I have always sensed, of the interconnectedness of all of creation, of integral ecology, and the need for us humans to change our ways.”
“The pope’s teaching has continued to challenge me to be an advocate for the created world and all creatures,” she added.
Pope Francis’ integration of the Church’s teaching on care for creation with a broader moral theology gave a deeper foundation to her previous convictions about the environment.
“I have come to a deeper awareness of our role and responsibilities as human beings,” Sister Sheila Marie said. “We are at the top of the pyramid. Jesus tells us the first shall be last.
“We have a grave responsibility to serve and care for creation. I pray that Pope Francis’ lasting legacy will lie in the actions that people across the world take to change our culture of consumption by making the necessary sacrifices and take responsible actions to allow all of God’s creation to thrive.”
A ‘mark that won’t go away’
During the past nearly 10 years in which he has been involved in promoting the teachings of “Laudato Si’,” Mundell has visited the Vatican on many occasions. He last visited Pope Francis in December.
As a result of those meetings, he came to have a great respect for the hard work that the relatively few people who work at the Vatican do to care for the Church around the world. He also experienced that his expertise as a lay Catholic was highly valued, even when he was the only lay person in the room.
“I was listened to,” Mundell said. “A lot of people didn’t have the environmental background that I did. There was a trust in me there, and it helped me realize that the Church is a Church for everyone. Every person can make a contribution.”
Now that Pope Francis has died, Mundell is filled with “an immense gratitude” for him and his ministry as the Church’s universal pastor and a hope that his teachings on care for creation, rooted firmly in the Gospel, will continue on well into the future.
“It changes you forever,” Mundell said. “It allows you to have resiliency, strength and faith. We can overcome a lot of difficulties. The vision of the Gospel that is there is something worth dying for. It is. I’m so grateful that it’s left its mark that won’t go away.”
(For more information on the archdiocesan Creation Care Ministry, go to ourcommonhome.org.) †
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