Pope to Brazilian Catholics: Allow nature to rest from our greedy exploitations
By Vatican News
For 61 years, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil has launched an initiative called the Campaign for Fraternity, which takes place every year during Lent and focuses on a specific topic. This year’s theme is “Fraternity and Integral Ecology.”
This theme, chosen in 2023, promotes a process of “integral conversion, listening to the cry of the poor and the cry of the Earth.”
A decade of climate advocacy
In a message released on Ash Wednesday – the start of the Lenten season – Pope Francis expresses his closeness to the Brazilian Catholic community and praises the bishops for launching this edition of the Campaign for Fraternity.
He highlights the bishops’ invitation for everyone to “walk, during Lent, a path of conversion based on the encyclical, Laudato Si’,” published 10 years ago, and its counterpart, the Apostolic Exhortation, Laudate Deum. The Pope explains these documents were meant to emphasize how the current “ecological crisis is a call to a profound inner conversion” (Laudato Si’, 217).
Recalling the words of Pope John Paul II, he stresses that it was “necessary to stimulate and support the ‘ecological conversion,’ which made humanity more sensitive” to the mission of caring for the Earth.
Taking action
In Brazil, a country home to the most biologically diverse population of native plant and animal species on Earth, protection of the environment is very important. This fall, the country will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP30 in Belém do Pará, at the heart of the Amazon.
In light of this, Pope Francis points out that the theme of the 2025 Campaign for Fraternity reiterates the Church’s readiness to foster global cooperation to “help overcome the climate crisis and preserve the marvelous work of Creation.”
The Pope’s message expresses his desire that the Campaign will “once again be a powerful aid to the people and communities of this beloved country” in their “concrete commitment to integral ecology.”
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