VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican is celebrating an ecumenical movement designed to promote “ecological conversion” and to respond to Pope Francis’s persistent calls to heed the “cry of the Earth.”
Starting September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the “Season of Creation” will run until the feast of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4, a saint heralded by the movement for his love of “ecology.”
The annual ecumenical event has been praised by the Pope, and this year’s celebration been called a precursor to the U.N.’s November climate conference. People around the world are being encouraged to join ecumenism to ecological efforts and so support the “well being of the earth.”
However, the former Prefect of the Vatican’s highest court, Cardinal Burke, has previously warned against the policies proposed by the movement as an idolatrous “push for worship of ‘Mother Earth’.”
Season of Creation: An ecumenical movement to heed the ‘cry of the Earth’
The theme of the 2021 Season of Creation is entitled “A home for all? Renewing the Oikos of God,” and calls on the “global Christian family” to respond to the “urgent need to heal our relationships with creation and with each other during the ecumenical Season of Creation.”
By choosing “Oikos”– a Greek word meaning “family,” “household,” or “dwelling” – as its theme, the movement is “celebrating the integral web of relationships that sustain the well being of the Earth.”
Heavily inspired by Pope Francis’s ecological encyclical Laudato Si, the ecumenical movement appears to equate union with God and union with the earth. According to the official website, “Season of Creation is a time of grace that the Church, in ecumenical dialogue, offers to humanity to renew its relationship with the Creator and with creation, through celebration, conversion and commitment together.”
Those partaking in the global initiative are urged to host an “ecumenical prayer gathering that unites all Christians for the care of our common home,” as well as holding “a cleanup project” and to “raise your voice for climate justice by participating in or leading an ongoing campaign, such as the fossil fuel divestment movement.”
On August 31, Vatican News interviewed Cecilia Dall’Oglio, the associate director of European programs of the Laudato si’ Movement and a representative of the Global Ecumenical Steering Committee for the Season of Creation. She noted how for the past seven years, ecumenical efforts in pursuit of “caring for our planet” have led to a “motivation for stronger ecumenical collaboration.”
Dall’Oglio drew further parallels between ecological issues and ecclesiastical ones, and said that humanity needs to “begin a process of ecological conversion.”
“We know that the Creator has given humankind a special vocation to care for his home, so we are called together to support equitable ecological, social, economic, and political relationships,” she added.
Such themes are often promoted by Pope Francis himself. In his 2019 message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the pontiff referenced the state of “emergency” in the world and called on people to “abandon our dependence on fossil fuels.”
He echoed his words in this Sunday’s Angelus address as well as his September video for the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, describing how the “cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor are becoming increasingly serious and alarming.” Referring to the period of “health, social, and environmental crisis,” Francis promoted “courageous choices, the choices necessary for a simple and environmentally sustainable lifestyle.” He called for change in “the way we eat, consume, travel, or the way we use water, energy, plastics, and many other material goods.”
A statement has been prepared for the Season of Creation by the Roman Pontiff, in conjunction with Ecumenical Patriarch Batholomew and Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of England, and is due to be released in the coming days.
Opening with an ecumenical prayer service, the Season of Creation 2021 was heralded by Rev. Dr. Chad Rimmer – Chair of Ecumenical Season of Creation Steering Committee and Program Executive for Lutheran Theology and Practice for the Lutheran World Federation – as a means to strengthen ecumenical ties as well as addressing ecological issues.
“We are destroying habitats and destabilizing ecosystems, which results in losing critical species at an alarming rate,” Rimmer added.
“Members of the human family are also forced to flee their homes due to climate induced insecurity and conflict.”
Despite the Papal backing for the ecumenical affair, “ecological conversion” has been described by Cardinal Raymond Burke, as “an argument for a one-world government,” marked by an “insidious” idolatry and a “masonic” concept of a “completely secularized people who no longer recognize that the governance of the world is in the hands of God, Who entrusts it to individual governments, nations, and groupings of people according to nature itself.”
“What we truly need is a religious conversion, in other words, a strong teaching and practice of faith in God and obedience to the order with which He has created us,” he added.
Season of Creation and the UN’s November climate meeting
The month-long ecumenical event occurs shortly before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), that will take place November 1-12 in Glasgow, Scotland. Pope Francis is expected to attend the meeting, along with numerous global leaders, but will not offer a public Mass during the time he is in Scotland. The COP26 meetings are to address the targets of global leaders to the 2015 Paris Climate agreement, which, amongst other things, proposes gender ideology, abortion, and contraception.
Both the Season of Creation and the COP26 meetings note the recent U.N. climate report, which was described by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as a “code red for humanity.” Vatican News echoed the U.N.’s sentiments by writing that the report “makes it clear that we are running out of time to avert the worst effects of the ecological crisis and the climate emergency.”
The U.N. report itself has garnered severe criticism, with Dr. Steven Koonin, former American undersecretary of energy for science, stating the report’s conclusions would lead to “great economic destruction,” and that it gave undue “credence to models” which did not account for historical climate trends.
In a May letter, Monsignor Bruno-Marie Duffé, the former secretary for the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, further linked the Season of Creation and COP26, stating how it was a “critical moment for Catholics to lift up the voices of the most vulnerable and advocate on their behalf.”
Duffé urged people to sign the “Healthy Planet, Healthy People” petition as a precursor to the COP26 meeting, in order to “listen to Pope Francis” and tell “world leaders how they should care for God’s creation.”
Vatican partnership with the UN
The Season of Creation marks another strengthening of ties between the Vatican and the global green movement, something heavily backed by the U.N. Amongst a number of UN engagements last December, Francis called “for a change of direction,” pledging to reduce the Vatican to “zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Whilst failing to mention Jesus Christ, or anything remotely religious, in his appearance at the summit, the Pope chose to base his statements on “fraternity and the alliance between the human being and the environment.”
On December 8, Francis joined forces with major global corporations to promote a new “economic system” of capitalism based on the U.N’s pro-abortion Sustainable Development Goals. The new “Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican” is fundamentally committed to promote “environmental, social, and governance measures” in order to “achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”
Such deepening ties with globalist corporations and leaders lends further credence to beliefs that Pope Francis is aligned with the call for a “Great Reset.” He has referenced a “supranational common good,” and said that “there is need for a special legally constituted authority capable of facilitating its implementation.”
The pontiff re-issued that call this spring when, in an address to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, he echoed the sentiments expressed by key “globalist” and founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab. Schwab’s proposed anti-Catholic “Great Reset,” is underpinned by a focus on a green financial agenda, the “withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies,” and a new financial system based on “investments” which advance “equality and sustainability,” and the building of a “‘green urban infrastructure.”
Such plans for drastic climate-based restrictions are already being promoted by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who recently declared that his government would apply what it had “learnt” from the COVID-19 crisis to the “climate crisis,” should he be re-elected as Canada’s prime minister on September 20.