On September 1 we celebrated the 17th World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, and on this date we began this years’ Time of Creation, which will culminate on October 4 with the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
In his message, Pope Francis, referring to his predecessors, invites us to live this time as an opportunity to cultivate our ecological conversion and thus respond to what Pope Paul VI called an ecological catastrophe.
This year, 2022, the Time of Creation takes on a special significance, especially in the affected regions of the northern hemisphere, which in these summer months are suffering from scorching heat, severe drought and the damage caused by the numerous fires that have destroyed hectares and hectares of green and cultivated areas, causing enormous damage to people and things. On the other hand, in the places where the atmospheric disturbance brought by the rain has arrived, there has been great damage caused by the torrential downpours which, penetrating into land made impermeable by the drought, have continued their course, violently bursting on everything in their path.
In addition to the damage caused by water, either by its absence or its abundance, there has also been damage caused by fires, which, unfortunately, have often been caused by human carelessness.
After a pandemic which is not yet overcome, humanity continues to live experiences of pain that sometimes are the effect of the natural course of life on the planet that man cannot control, such as drought or floods, and at other times are due to the aggressiveness of those who remain insensitive to the «choir of bitter cries» that rise from the Earth and the humanity and continue to neglect the great treasure placed in our hands by the Creator. May this new experience of pain help people to join forces to pay off the «ecological debt» they have contracted by mistreating the earth with our lifestyles that are not always respectful of creation.