World Biodiversity Day

The Earth cries out
in dismay at the suffering of living systems

We all living things have constructed the environmental conditions in which we find ourselves. The Earth is not living in the New Age sense or in the simplistic sense of a single organism, but is constructed, produced, invented, woven by the living.

All the beings that make up the Earth each have their own power of action as they have created, with their unintended effects, the tiny surface of the planet where we live.

Today, the short history of human societies and the long history of the Earth have come into conflict: the ‘scream’ of the Earth calls us to a radical transformation because we are in the midst of a cosmological mutation that also calls for a mutation in the relationships between spirituality, politics, materiality, etc. if we want to safeguard biodiversity.

Image: www.settimananews.it

The environmental issue goes hand in hand with the social one: the emergence of a new cosmological situation requires a new understanding of living things and a new worldview.

Like Pope Francis, on this day we try to connect the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor and to live the link between ecology and injustice in a more conscious and responsible way.

And with him we take note of the fact that: “the Earth, somehow, we could say, gets excited, can act and suffer” (Source: Repubblica of 03/05/2022, interview by Antonio Spadaro) and asks us to take care of it especially by changing our lifestyles.

“But today we cannot help but recognise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach, which must integrate justice into discussions about the environment, to listen as much to the cry of the earth as to the cry of the poor”.

(Encyclical Laudato sì, paragraph 49).