On Care for Our Common Home

On 8 June this year, the Dicastery for Divine Worship and theDiscipline of the Sacraments, the Vatican’s department that oversees the appropriate celebration of Catholic liturgy, issued the formula for a new votive Mass, the Mass for the Care of Creation. Those who had been following the pontificate of the late Pope Francis, will know that care for the environment was something close to his heart. He chose the name of a Saint, Francis (of Assisi), who has garnered fame universally, and not just among Catholics, for his love of the natural world – famously addressing the creations of God as brothers and sisters in his Canticle of Creatures. Pope Francis took his concern for the environment further in his second encyclical Laudato Si – another reference to St. Francis’ Canticle – which was subtitled “Care for our common home,” and raised a critique of consumerism and irresponsible economic development. In offering this critique, Pope Francis expanded the Catholic Church’s social teaching, offering Catholics concrete directions on how to lead their lives. Of course, Pope Francis was not the first Roman pontiff to do so, having been preceded by Pope Benedict XVI who similarly offered a critique of the modern developmental paradigm in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate. He was also known as the Green Pope for a variety of initiatives he encouraged toward expressing environmental care, including installing solar panels, promoting a ban on non-organic pesticides, and encouraging tree planting, all with a view to achieve carbon neutrality for Vatican City. His own predecessor, Pope Saint John Paul II was similarly aware of the connections between a degradation of the environment and our insistence on instant gratification and consumerism. As he pointed out in his message for the World Day of Peace on 1 January 1990, “the seriousness of the ecological issue lays bare the depth of man's moral crisis.”

And yet, despite these important steps, there is a need for a more critical look at the tiny details of our lifestyles. Take, for example, my experience in the Vatican City, on an Easter Sunday some years ago. Part of a choir that would sing at St. Peter’s Basilica before the morning mass on Easter Sunday, I was shuffling around in the portico of the Basilica, converted for the day into a sacristy of sorts, looking for water to quench my thirst – we had been up since very early in the morning. I spied a case of plastic water bottles and headed in their direction. Now, while I normally eschew drinking from plastic bottles, I was so crazed with thirst I was willing to let all my principles slide. Looking for someone who might be responsible for them, I asked a nearby service person if I could have one of those bottles. “No!” he responded, somewhat imperiously, “They are for the Holy Father!”

Now, I am sure that the Holy Father, after all his exhortations, was not going to drink from those very bottles; but this little episode said a lot about how much work needs to be done at the bottom of the pyramid if we are to take ecological responsibility and care for our common home seriously. It should also be said, that at least in Rome, one can safely drink from the tap, as well as the many public fountains where water flows freely and continuously, so that there is no need to carry or purchase the plastic water bottles that are the bane of contemporary existence.

Speaking of working at the bottom of the pyramid, there is much that can be done in parishes across Goa, at least at the level of formal worship. Directed by a misguided understanding of participation and creativity, most liturgical celebrations in our State unleash horrific amounts of single use decorations, which are invariably produced from very synthetic products that do not safely bio-degrade. One of the very succinct teachings of Pope Francis was his warnings, and indeed his condemnation, of the “throwaway culture” that treats people as if they were disposable. This disposable culture, where we treat human beings as if they were disposable, exists only because of the prior existence of a culture where precious resources are treated as if they were disposable – blindly throwing them away after a single use.

Traditional Catholic worship was not like this. Even until a few decades ago, bunting was carefully folded and stowed away until they could be used the following year. Altar decorations made of wood and silver or gold leaf, or silver repoussé would be brought out annually to lend dignity to the occasion. Things were even better before the age of plastics burst upon us, when decorations were made, not just of cloth, but of precious fabrics that were taken proper care of so that they could be used year, after year, after year, for decades.

A contemporary emphasis on creativity, has ensured that liturgical worship, rather than seeing quality products being used with spectacular effect, has become the staging ground for cheap, disposable products being used in a most banal manner. The producers are invariably congratulated for their mediocre productions and this only serves to entrench the illness further into our consciousness. Similarly, social celebrations are marked by distribution of trophies that owe their origins to silver cups distributed to winners but are now made of cheap plastic and tawdrier sensibilities. And then there is the gift giving, that marks every celebration, where we gift plastic objects that have no real value. And of course, it is recognized that they have no value, but are tolerated because they fulfill the requirements of the mindless social norms that we have set in place.

At the end of the day, it appears that we are faced with a choice between the solemn, the expensive and resuable, versus the discardable objects that are the products of a system that privileges spontaneity and creativity. The first is responsible, the second is responsible for a disregard for the creations of the creator.

“May the sacrament of unity

which we have received, O Father,

increase communion with you and with our brothers and sisters,

so that, as we await the new heavens and the new earth,

we may learn to live in harmony with all creatures.” – (Post communion prayer from the Mass for the Care of Creation.)

(A version of this text was first published in the O Heraldo on 9 July 2025.)

(Image reference: “St. Francis receiving the Stigmata,” Paolo Vernonese, ca. 1582, Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia.)