This year’s 32nd ecumenical Season of Creation comes at a time when it could easily be lost in the context of current events, but is now perhaps even more important, according to the Vatican.
The Season of Creation is an annual celebration and time of prayer from September 1, the World Day of Prayer for Care of Creation, until October 4, St. Francis of Assisi’s feast day. It was started in 1989 by the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Dimitrios I as a day of prayer for creation on the first day of the Orthodox liturgical year. Since then, it has become a time when all 2.2 billion Christians can unite in prayer and action to reflect on the earth and our role as stewards of it.
Pope Francis first officially invited Catholics to participate in 2019. This year has particular importance, not only because of the global pandemic and its social justice ramifications, but also because it is the Laudato Si’ Anniversary Year. For the encyclical’s five-year anniversary, the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development announced a celebratory year of action from May 24, 2020-May 24, 2021.
“Everyone’s talents and involvement are needed to redress the damage caused by human abuse of God’s creation. #SeasonOfCreation,” Pope Francis tweeted on September 25.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the pope has been emphasizing the importance of each person’s vocation playing a unique role in cooperative efforts to alleviate human suffering.
“The anniversary year will open with Laudato Si’ Week 2020, and will proceed with several initiatives, realized in partnership and with a clear emphasis on ‘ecological conversion’ in ‘action.’ We invite everyone to join us. The urgency of the situation calls for immediate, holistic and unified responses at all levels – local, regional, national and international. We need, above all, ‘a peoples’ movement’ from below, an alliance of all people of good will,” the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development stated in their guidelines for the anniversary year.
The dicastery’s guiding document also outlines numerous movements and action items that will occur throughout the year, including a new documentary on Laudato Si’, a World Economic Forum, a campaign against plastic pollution, a “Laudate” musical collaboration with children’s choir worldwide, and the first-ever social media Bible-reading contest. The document also presents multi-year plans for families, parishes, schools, hospitals, and religious communities for journeying towards “integral ecology.” At the close of the year in 2021, Laudato Si’ awards will be given for the first time to outstanding organizations and communities. The awards will continue annually for the foreseeable future.
In his message on September 1, 2020, Pope Francis explained:
“Each year, particularly since the publication of the Encyclical Laudato Si’ (LS, 24 May 2015), the first day of September is celebrated by the Christian family as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation and the beginning of the Season of Creation… I am very pleased that the theme chosen by the ecumenical family for the celebration of the 2020 Season of Creation is Jubilee for the Earth, precisely in this year that marks the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. In the Holy Scriptures, a Jubilee is a sacred time to remember, return, rest, restore, and rejoice.”
This year, the Season of Creation will conclude for Catholics with a new encyclical from Pope Francis. Entitled Fratelli tutti, or “All Brothers and Sisters,” it will be about social friendship and fraternity. On October 3, the pope will go to Assisi to celebrate Mass and sign the encyclical. On Sunday, October 4, fittingly on the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, Fratelli tutti will be released.
Previously the Campus News Editor and Catholicism 101 Editor, Olivia dabbles in The Torch’s writing and photography. She is a senior studying theology and applied psychology and human development with a minor in journalism. She is unashamedly passionate about youth ministry, Haiti, all things charismatic, the Oxford comma, and CatholicTV––where she can often be found as an on-camera news reporter or host of the To the Heights podcast.
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