Q&A: This action platform is rallying Catholics for climate change

A new Vatican-backed organization is working to mobilize those of the Catholic faith across the world into climate action.  

The Laudato Si’ Action Platform, launched in November 2021, is an international coalition — offered by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development as a service — that provides practical guidance, resources, and advice on how to protect the planet at the community, family, and corporate level.

A “digital meeting place,” it aims to implement Pope Francis’ 2015 “Laudato Si” papal encyclical letter in which he called for the planet to be protected and shared steps on how to engage in “ecological conversion.”

“The action platform is all about putting that vision into practice so that people are engaged in caring for the planet, caring for creation, helping to minimize their negative impacts, and increase their positive impacts,” John Mundell, the platform’s new director, told Devex. “The hope is that people will develop their own local plans over a seven year period and take specific actions to make things better.”

So far, LSAP has engaged over 10,000 people, but Mundell believes the initiative has the power to reach millions. As of 2030, there were 1.36 billion Catholics globally.

“[Rather than] a lot of diverse energy going in 100 different directions, it’s a wave — an inundation if you will — of activity that can move the needle,” he said.

Mundell, who began his role in July, shared where the inspiration for LSAP came from, how the Catholic faith can make a difference on climate action, and why the organization is unique.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

There are lots of organizations already working in the climate space. What makes LSAP different?

What's unique about [LSAP] is it involves the Catholic Church and potentially all the Catholics of the world.

Secondly, the church is trying to undergo what we call an “ecological conversion” to model our beliefs, which is all about taking care of the planet, taking care of creation.

The message was there in some ways in the early biblical times, in the Old Testament, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, but people, for many years, have taken that as we're supposed to subdue the Earth rather than protect it. What's unique about us is that we've decided we're going to try to put effort into this at a global scale to involve the church and all of its structures from the individual to the family, to the parishes and schools and universities, to certain sectors like the health care industry, to businesses, and also religious congregations.

What specific actions are you trying to encourage people to engage in?

There's a series of goals that we're focusing on. One is to increase our awareness of the cry of the Earth, which really focuses on how our actions impact the planet — the ecosystems, the biodiversity, the overconsumption.

A second goal is to increase our awareness of the cry of the poor. That may mean greater sensitivity in our actions locally, [thinking about] how they impact the people that don't have as much, both where we are and globally. We also want to increase our awareness and think about a new economic system that's more circular, more sustainable.

What the platform does is take each goal and offer suggestions for specific actions at the individual, the family, the business level, etc. For example, if you're a family, you can start your own recycling program or choose not to purchase new items when you don't need to. If you're a business, you may look at where you get your supplies, [whether you’re] buying locally, what kind of waste you generate, and how you can minimize that.

Those who want to take part go to our website and sign up. Initially, they’re asked to do a self-assessment and then select actions they can put into practice and that becomes their Laudato Si’ plan for the year.

How do you plan to measure engagement and success?

After perhaps another year, we would like to issue a global Catholic sustainability report. So how's the church doing? We're going to take this data and show how much activity is going on. For example, how many solar energy systems, recycling programs, and waste reduction programs are in place. We're going to report back and say, “Here's how we're doing, here are the parts of the world that are really active, here are the parts that need more help.”

The idea is that if we can make ourselves more visible in [taking] action, then Catholics can inspire others.

The idea of this first year is to begin the engagement, start to get people who are working in this area to really focus on pulling this project together. Next year, it's to spread the idea on a larger scale.

This has never been tried before on a Vatican level so we’ve got various bumps and things to learn. We're [working with] cultures from all around the world so not everybody sees things the same way… We are trying to find the things that unite us while also respecting those.

Is there anything you’d like the international development community to know about the work that you're doing — and do you have a call to action?

One of the things that I think really helps us a lot is the continued visibility of [how] their work relates to climate impacts. For example, if people in Asia, Oceania, or the Pacific are doing work that's directly related to migration due to rising sea levels or other impacts, we can use that information to provide motivation for people to engage [with LSAP].

During this Season of Creation we are celebrating from Sept. 1 to Oct. 4, Pope Francis has invited us to hear the “anguished pleas, lamenting our mistreatment of this our common home.”

It is this cry of anguish from those impacted by the negative impacts of climate change that must resound around the world. I would ask the development sector to join together to act as megaphones and amplify what they see locally in real circumstances. More than anything, [LSPA] will motivate people to act. As a result, our hope is that more people will begin to act with local development groups and charities to address these specific impacts.

Devex, with support from our partner GHR Foundation, is exploring the intersection between faith and development. Visit the Focus on: Faith and Development page for more. Disclaimer: The views in this article do not necessarily represent the views of GHR Foundation.