Dearest Planet,

We could tell you ‘We are sorry’, but we would much rather say ‘I love you’. Because love, more than anything else, means that we care and that our feelings are real and deep.  We know that when we put our arms around you, we feel safe and alive.  The sound of your waters delights us, the green of your woods transports us, the whiteness of your snow, the blue of your skies. You offer us a thousand different colours; you are music, poetry, art. And yet…

We are not good at loving you.  And this makes us suffer.  It breaks our heart to see that we have broken that relationship of love with you.  In order to mend it, to become worthy once again of your beauty, to create a new harmony together, we are going to dedicate our Newsletter to you this coming Earth Day, 22nd April.

We will include other articles too, quoting from the documentary by Wim Wenders: ‘Pope Francis, A Man of His Word’, a film, based on his Encyclical Laudato Si, in which Pope Francis explains, in just a few simple, powerful words, that our lives depend on this relationship of love.  He speaks of wounds and suffering; he denounces our accelerated exploitation of you and pays tribute to the ancient canticles of Saint Francis, which still speak to us today.  The humble Francis transformed Christianity and continues to transform the world.

In his letter, subtitled ‘Care for our Common Home’, the Pope urges us to understand that protecting you is the most urgent issue of our times; that it is in cultivating your fruits, in looking after you, that we look after ourselves.

Movingly, he asks the question: “if you were to ask me who is the poorest today, I would say: Mother Earth. For we have plundered and abused her”. His words pierce through the contradictions that surround us; the fine line between control and destruction, well-being and extinction, life and death, the pursuit of comfort as we slip unawares towards a danger that we do not wish to see.

“We realise that things are not going well – says the Holy Father – when the air we breathe, the sky, water and every living creature, is under constant threat.  If we acknowledge this, we find the courage to say: we need and want to change”.

Pope Francis speaks of integral ecology. The change will come, he says, when we say goodbye to “an economy of exclusion and inequality, ruled by money rather than by serving”.  This type of economy marginalises, kills and, he insists, destroys Mother Earth.

Pope Francis speaks of a crisis for which we all share responsibility.  No one can say: “it has nothing to do with me”.  A crisis in which the discarded and the vulnerable are always the first to pay the price.  With every environmental crisis comes a corresponding social crisis: every destruction of the environment creates exclusion and suffering.

Everything is connected, the Holy Father reminds us.  The planet is like a body: if one part is not right, it affects the whole being.  Another image that can help us understand this connection, is presented in the Netflix documentary series “Our Planet”. It shows the Iguazu Falls between Brazil and Argentina which provides millions of tons of water.  Most of this comes from the Amazon Forest, 1000 km away.  If this is destroyed, a huge vital cycle will be interrupted.  Nevertheless, the Amazon Forest continues to be cut down to meet commercial demand.

Dearest Planet, we live in a complex and delicate system of relationships in which nature too has her culture which cannot be ignored.  Out of love for you, we have no more excuses nor time to waste.  To take better care of you, putting actions before words, is our duty.