Intervento della Rev.ma Suor Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A
Intervento di S.E. Mons. Allwyn D’Silva
Intervento della Sig.ra Lorna Gold
Intervento del Sig. Alonso de Llanes
Alle ore 12.00 di oggi, presso la Sala Stampa della Santa Sede, Via della Conciliazione, 54, ha avuto luogo la Conferenza Stampa di presentazione del V Rapporto annuale della Piattaforma d’Azione Laudato Si’ (LSAP), uno spazio digitale progettato dal Dicastero per il Servizio dello Sviluppo Umano Integrale, in cui comunità e istituzioni possono registrarsi, elaborare il proprio piano di ecologia integrale e registrare le azioni realizzate.
Sono intervenuti: la Rev.ma Suor Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A., Prefetto del Dicastero per il Servizio dello Sviluppo Umano Integrale; S.E. Mons. Allwyn D’Silva, Vescovo Ausiliare emerito dell'Arcidiocesi di Bombay; la Rev.ma Suor Roxanne Schares, SSND, Segretaria Esecutiva dell’Unione Internazionale delle Superiore Generali (UISG); la Sig.ra Lorna Gold, Direttrice Esecutiva del Movimento Laudato Si’; e il Sig. Alonso de Llanes, Direttore del Programma della Piattaforma d’Azione Laudato Si’.
Riportiamo di seguito alcuni interventi:
Intervento della Rev.ma Suor Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A
Buongiorno.
Lo scorso anno abbiamo ricordato e celebrato i dieci anni dalla pubblicazione dell’Enciclica Laudato si’.
Non è un testo nato per essere soltanto letto o citato. Papa Francesco lo ha offerto come invito alla conversione, per risanare le tre relazioni fondamentali ferite dal peccato: con Dio, con il prossimo e con la terra[1].
Dieci anni non sono molti nella vita della Chiesa, ma bastano per chiederci che cosa accade quando un’Enciclica mette radici: non solo nelle parole, ma nella preghiera – penso alla Messa per la custodia della creazione, approvata da Papa Leone XIV e inserita nel Messale Romano[2] –, nella terra che coltiviamo, nei giovani che educhiamo, nelle decisioni delle nostre istituzioni.
Il Vangelo parla dell’uomo che getta il seme sul terreno: «dorma o vegli, di notte o di giorno, il seme germoglia e cresce. Come, egli stesso non lo sa» (Mc 4,26-27)[3]. A noi è chiesto di essere terreno buono (cfr Mc 4,20); la crescita appartiene a Dio.
Papa Leone ci ha ricordato che occorre passare «da discorsi ambientalisti a una conversione ecologica che trasformi lo stile di vita personale e comunitario», una conversione che nasce da un «ritorno al cuore»[4] e che i cristiani non possono separare «da quell’inversione di rotta che seguire Gesù richiede loro»[5].
La cura del creato non è un interesse di settore. Il Signore Dio pose l’uomo nel giardino di Eden «perché lo coltivasse e lo custodisse» (Gen 2,15). Per questo l’Enciclica afferma che vivere la vocazione di essere custodi dell’opera di Dio «non costituisce qualcosa di opzionale e nemmeno un aspetto secondario dell’esperienza cristiana»[6].
La Laudato si’ Action Platform è nata cinque anni fa per rendere concreta questa conversione, personale e comunitaria. Offre alle comunità un cammino condiviso: riflettere, discernere, programmare, agire e poi tornare a riflettere. Non sostituisce ciò che già vive nelle Chiese locali, né chiede a tutti di rispondere allo stesso modo.
Aiuta ogni comunità a chiedersi: se qualcuno entrasse nelle nostre parrocchie, scuole, famiglie e comunità religiose, che cosa gli farebbe capire che la custodia del creato è parte del nostro modo di vivere la missione? «Dai loro frutti li riconoscerete» (Mt 7,16).
In questi anni la visione ha preso forma in luoghi molto diversi: negli orti scolastici, dove i ragazzi imparano a coltivare la terra; nelle comunità che piantano alberi nella Repubblica Democratica del Congo; nelle istituzioni ecclesiali filippine che hanno rinnovato l’uso dell’energia; nelle università che hanno dato vita a reti per fare propria la prospettiva dell’ecologia integrale, rinnovando anche i loro percorsi di studio. Non sono semplici progetti ambientali: sono scelte su ciò che insegniamo e custodiamo, sull’uso dei beni che ci sono affidati, sul mondo che consegniamo a chi verrà dopo di noi.
Un anniversario è anche tempo di esame di coscienza.
Abbiamo imparato che un invito non basta: chi chiede un impegno deve anche accompagnare chi lo assume. E abbiamo imparato che non tutte le comunità partono dalle stesse possibilità: alcune dispongono di reti, mezzi e competenze; altre, non meno generose, di molto meno. «Portate i pesi gli uni degli altri» (Gal 6,2): un invito rivolto a tutti chiede che la partecipazione sia davvero possibile per tutti.
La Piattaforma ha reso più visibile l’impegno della Chiesa. Ma la misura più vera del cammino è se l’Enciclica sta cambiando il modo in cui le nostre istituzioni decidono e si rinnovano. Stiamo educando i giovani alla responsabilità verso il creato? Usiamo i beni con sobrietà? Sappiamo farci prossimi dei poveri, i primi a soffrire quando il creato è ferito?
Nella sua prima Enciclica, Magnifica humanitas, dedicata alla custodia della persona umana nel tempo dell’intelligenza artificiale, Papa Leone parla di «una bontà originaria che lo sguardo umano deve custodire, coltivare e far maturare»[7]. È il linguaggio della Genesi ed è la convinzione di Laudato si’: «Non c’è ecologia senza un’adeguata antropologia»[8]. Custodire il creato e custodire l’uomo sono un unico compito.
Oggi ci poniamo una domanda nuova: che cosa il cammino di una comunità può rendere possibile per un’altra? La promessa della Piattaforma è che ogni comunità diventi per le altre fonte di conoscenza e di aiuto concreto. È l’esortazione dell’apostolo Pietro: «Ciascuno, secondo il dono ricevuto, lo metta a servizio degli altri, come buoni amministratori della multiforme grazia di Dio» (1 Pt 4,10).
Per cinque anni abbiamo portato le comunità alla Piattaforma. Ora speriamo che sia la Piattaforma a farle incontrare tra loro.
Papa Leone ci ha ricordato che Dio ci chiederà «se abbiamo coltivato e custodito bene questo mondo che Egli ha creato» e «se ci siamo presi cura dei nostri fratelli e sorelle»[9]. Vorremmo poter rispondere di sì.
Grazie.
__________________
[1] Cfr Francesco, Lett. enc. Laudato si’ sulla cura della casa comune (24 maggio 2015), 66.
[2] Cfr Dicastero per il Culto Divino e la Disciplina dei Sacramenti, Decreto con cui si pubblica il formulario della Missa «pro custodia creationis» (Messa per la custodia della creazione), 8 giugno 2025.
[3] I testi biblici sono citati secondo la traduzione CEI 2008.
[4] Leone XIV, Discorso ai partecipanti al Convegno «Raising Hope» nel decennale dell’Enciclica Laudato si’, Castel Gandolfo, 1° ottobre 2025.
[5] Leone XIV, Udienza generale, 19 novembre 2025.
[6] Francesco, Lett. enc. Laudato si’, 217.
[7] Leone XIV, Lett. enc. Magnifica humanitas sulla custodia della persona umana nel tempo dell’intelligenza artificiale (15 maggio 2026), 20.
[8] Francesco, Lett. enc. Laudato si’, 118.
[9] Leone XIV, Discorso ai partecipanti al Convegno «Raising Hope», 1° ottobre 2025.
[01610-IT.01] [Testo originale: Italiano]
Intervento di S.E. Mons. Allwyn D’Silva
Good afternoon, and thank you for being here.
During Lent, we often ask ourselves a familiar question: What am I willing to give up?
Perhaps a favorite food, a small comfort, or something that has become too important in our daily lives.
Some years ago, in the Archdiocese of Bombay, we began asking another question alongside it: What if our fasting could also teach us to care more deeply for creation?
We encouraged what we called a carbon fast. It invited people to examine ordinary choices: the electricity we consume, the water we use, the plastic we discard.
These may seem like small things. But they remind us that faith can change even the habits we barely notice.
In my hometown of Mumbai, this responsibility carries particular urgency.
Our city lives between the sea and the monsoon. Severe rains flood roads and disrupt daily life. The loss of mangroves leaves coastal communities more exposed to storms. And rising temperatures make life increasingly difficult for those who work outdoors or live in poorly protected homes.
I spent many years ministering in neighborhoods where families cannot simply stay home when the heat becomes dangerous or relocate when their homes are threatened.
These realities enter the lives of the people who gather in our churches: their journeys to work, the safety of their homes, the health of their children.
Care for creation is part of our pastoral responsibility.
Over time, I have seen how personal commitment can become part of the life of a parish.
At St. John the Baptist Church in Thane, where I served as parish priest, we introduced rainwater harvesting, solar energy, and other changes to the way the parish used its resources.
At Holy Family Parish in Chakala, parishioners have collected rainwater, replacing disposable plastics, solar power generation, and fostering biodiversity.
These are ordinary decisions. But they reflect a parish taking responsibility for the environment in which it serves.
And what begins in one parish can gradually become part of the life of an entire diocese.
Through our Archdiocesan Commission for Ecology, we have brought people together for formation, collaboration, and the exchange of experiences.
Last year, more than a hundred people gathered in Mumbai to consider a common ecological plan for the Archdiocese's 125 parishes.
One proposal was to have parishes with established environmental practices share what they had learned with neighboring communities.
I find this especially encouraging. A parish that has learned something through experience can help another parish avoid beginning from zero.
What begins as a question of personal conscience can become a conversation in a parish hall. And what begins in a parish can gradually become part of the shared life of an entire diocese.
But experience has also taught us that such commitments need continuity.
Parish priests change. Volunteers move on. New responsibilities arise. If ecological work depends entirely on one committed person, it may disappear when that person leaves.
This is where I see the value of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform.
Our ecological journey in Mumbai began before the Platform existed. But the Platform offers a practical framework through which communities can reflect on their responsibilities, develop plans, review their progress, and sustain their commitments.
I would therefore offer an invitation to my brother bishops, drawing on what we have learned in our own archdiocese.
Let us consider how care for creation can find a lasting place in the ordinary pastoral life of our dioceses.
We can bring it into pastoral planning, support parish initiatives, make room for lay expertise, and encourage communities to learn from one another.
The Laudato Si’ Action Platform offers us a shared resource for this work, while leaving each local Church free to discern the actions most appropriate to its circumstances.
And perhaps this is where I would leave my reflection today.
During Lent, we ask what we are willing to give up.
A carbon fast lasts forty days. But the decisions our institutions make can shape people's lives for decades.
If our faith can change what we choose for forty days, why should it not change what our institutions choose for the next forty years?
Thank you.
[01611-EN.01] [Original text: English]
Intervento della Sig.ra Lorna Gold
The next five years must be about accelerating ecological conversion, addressing the inequalities that limit participation, and making sure the commitments of Catholic institutions translate into lasting change.
1. An anniversary worth celebrating—and a moment to be challenged
Five years ago, the Church set out on an ambitious shared journey through the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. We have real reasons for gratitude: thousands of people and institutions have responded.
But we cannot measure these five years only against where we began in 2021. We must also measure them against the changing reality of the world around us.
The climate emergency is intensifying. Communities are already confronting extreme weather, environmental degradation, displacement, and threats to their livelihoods.
The uncomfortable truth is that the pace of ecological destruction is not slowing to match the pace of institutional change.
This anniversary must therefore be more than a celebration of participation. It should renew our sense of urgency about what participation is meant to accomplish.
2. Why the Church needs both a movement and an institutional platform
Laudato Si’ Movement works through spirituality, grassroots organizing, formation, and advocacy. It brings together people who want their faith to make a difference in the world.
The Laudato Si’ Action Platform provides a common framework through which institutions can organize their commitments, plan action, reflect on progress, and sustain their work over time.
Movements create momentum. Institutions give that momentum staying power. But institutions also need movements to keep asking whether their commitments are going far enough.
This relationship is reciprocal. Local communities bring knowledge, urgency, and practical experience. Institutions contribute resources, continuity, and the capacity to make lasting decisions.
As the Platform's operational partner, Laudato Si’ Movement helps connect these dimensions through engagement, formation, communications, partnerships, and support for participating communities.
We do not see the Movement and the Platform as competing approaches. They are different expressions of a shared mission, and each makes the other more effective.
3. The inequalities we cannot overlook
One of the most important lessons of the first five years is that willingness to act and capacity to act are not the same thing.
A community may have strong ecological leadership but lack financing, technical assistance, reliable connectivity, or staff who can sustain an initiative.
These obstacles are particularly significant across parts of the Global South, where communities may face severe ecological pressures while having fewer resources with which to respond.
We cannot call our response truly global if the communities facing the greatest obstacles have the fewest resources to participate.
This is not simply a question of distributing more resources. It is also a question of who sets priorities, who makes decisions, and whose experience shapes the solutions.
Communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania are already developing remarkable responses. They must be recognized not only as participants or beneficiaries, but as leaders whose knowledge the wider Church needs.
4. What the next five years must demand of us
Greater institutional courage. Ecological conversion must influence decisions about investments, energy, education, property, procurement, and governance—not remain confined to occasional environmental activities.
More equitable access to resources and leadership. Communities need practical support to carry out their commitments, and those closest to ecological challenges must have meaningful influence over the response.
Stronger connections between local action and wider advocacy. The decisions of individual institutions matter, but responding to the climate emergency also requires collective action on the systems that produce ecological harm.
Sustained engagement. We need to accompany communities beyond the moment of inspiration, while creating opportunities for them to learn from one another and sustain their own leadership.
The new tools Alonso has presented can support this work. But technology will only be as transformative as the relationships, resources, and decisions it helps make possible.
Laudato Si’ Movement will continue mobilizing communities, strengthening grassroots leadership, and advocating for ecological justice, while helping the Platform translate that shared commitment into lasting institutional practice.
The climate emergency will not wait for our institutions to become comfortable with change.
We have spent five years demonstrating that the Church is willing to respond.
The next five years must demonstrate what the Church is willing to change.
[01613-EN.01] [Original text: English]
Intervento del Sig. Alonso de Llanes
Good afternoon, and thank you for being here.
Today, we are announcing a new Digital Atlas of Catholic ecological action, alongside four priorities that will guide the Laudato Si’ Action Platform over the next five years.
But before I tell you what we are building, I want to talk about what we have learned—and what this work has come to mean to us.
Picture a parish secretary in Colombia, finding a few minutes between other responsibilities to create an account.
“How do I register?”
Months later, another volunteer takes over. “Could someone help me reset our password?”
Or a sister in Japan asks whether a planning resource is available in her language.
These may seem like simple questions. But behind them are people making space in already busy lives to respond to Laudato Si’.
When people hear that the Platform is an initiative of a Vatican Dicastery, they may imagine something rather grand—strategies developed in Rome, instructions sent around the world.
Our daily work is much more human: helping people, answering questions, improving resources, learning from participants, and sometimes solving technical problems.
We have discovered that you can build a platform. But you cannot build a journey without people.
Five years after its launch, the Platform has welcomed more than 13,000 participants, including over 6,200 institutions.
We can identify where participation is growing, examine the plans institutions submit, and study thousands of actions they have reported completing.
But this evidence also reveals important limitations.
An enrollment is a beginning, not an achievement. A plan is a commitment, not yet a result. And an action reported as complete does not necessarily tell us what changed.
Consider an experience documented in our fifth-anniversary report.
In Nigeria, Catholic dioceses have been participating in a national tree-growing campaign. Dr. Pascal Onu told us about one diocese that refused to plant trees until there was a credible plan to water and care for them.
Sometimes the most responsible ecological decision is not to plant another tree. It is to ensure that those already planted will survive.
That distinction matters to us.
We have learned that institutions need practical guidance, continuity, and opportunities to learn from others. A parish may have already solved a problem that another parish, thousands of kilometers away, is only beginning to confront.
The knowledge we need already exists in many places. But too often, the people who hold it cannot find one another.
This is the challenge shaping our next five years.
Today, I would like to announce four developments in response.
1. The Digital Atlas of Laudato Si’
Today, we are launching our new Digital Atlas, connecting the work of participating Catholic institutions with geographical and climate data.
Let me explain what visitors can do.
Open the Atlas and select a country or diocese. You can locate participating Catholic institutions and, where they have given permission, view their ecological plans and reflections.
You can then explore climate and environmental information alongside those institutions—including data on deforestation, emissions, and hurricane exposure.
For example, a diocese in a hurricane-prone region can examine where its participating institutions are located in relation to areas of greater climate risk.
A parish near a region experiencing deforestation can examine changes in the surrounding environment while discovering the ecological commitments of other Catholic communities.
Through the Atlas,we are bringing together three kinds of information in a single LSAP tool: where participating Catholic institutions are present, what their communities are doing, and what environmental data tells us about the places they inhabit.
These are not simply points on a map. They are institutions serving real communities in environments facing real pressures.
The Atlas gives Church leaders and local institutions a new tool to understand those circumstances and identify possibilities for collaboration.
It will continue to develop as more participants share their experiences and new scientific information becomes available.
Our aim is practical: to help institutions make better-informed decisions and learn from work already underway.
2. A simpler and more accessible Platform
Our second priority is to remove obstacles to participation.
We are improving the journey from registration to planning, action reporting, and annual review.
But accessibility cannot depend on connectivity.
For the first time, we are making the core Laudato Si’ Action Platform journey available offline. Communities will be able to use printed resources to reflect, develop a Laudato Si’ Plan, identify actions, and review their progress—even where internet access is limited or unavailable.
This matters because participation in the ecological conversion of the Church should not depend on bandwidth. A community should not be excluded from this journey simply because it cannot reliably connect to a website.
At the same time, we want to make the knowledge already emerging across the Platform easier to find and share. That is why we are creating a new Learning Hub: a space where participants can find practical resources, learn from experiences across the Church, and discover approaches that can be adapted to their own circumstances.
Over the past five years, we have seen that many of the solutions institutions are looking for already exist somewhere in our network. A school may have developed an effective approach to ecological education. A religious congregation may have experience managing land or reducing emissions. A diocese may have learned how to mobilize hundreds of parishes.
Rather than expecting every institution to begin from zero, we want the experience of one community to become a resource for another.
3. Artificial intelligence and better evidence
Our third priority is to make the knowledge collected through the Platform more useful.
We are exploring artificial intelligence tools that could help participants find relevant resources and identify possible actions based on their institutional and environmental circumstances.
We also want to improve how we evaluate progress.
If an institution reports planting trees, can we learn whether those trees survived? If it adopts an ecological plan, can we understand whether that commitment has changed its decisions or operations?
These questions require better data, follow-up, and appropriate verification.
But technology alone cannot answer them.
Artificial intelligence can help us find possible answers. It cannot decide which answers are right for a community.
That is why our anniversary gathering on November 6 will include an interactive workshop on artificial intelligence, human creativity, and integral ecology.
Participants will help us examine what these technologies should—and should not—do, taking into account environmental costs, human judgment, and the needs of local communities.
We want the next generation of tools to be shaped by the people who will use them.
4. A global network of Digital Missionaries
Finally, we are investing in the people who make these connections possible.
This year, we launched our first Digital Missionaries Bootcamp, supporting communicators who tell stories of integral ecology and connect communities online.
Over the next five years, we want to expand this formation into a global network capable of sharing experiences across languages, countries, and Church sectors.
Because technology can help people find one another. But relationships still have to be built.
These four developments reflect an important change in how we understand our responsibility.
Being connected to Rome should not centralize knowledge. It should help knowledge travel.
The real promise of this Platform is not that every community can turn to us for answers. It is that every community can become a source of knowledge and practical help for another.
That is what we want our technology, our partnerships, and our work over the next five years to make possible.
We have spent five years bringing communities to the Platform. Now we want the Platform to bring communities to one another.
Thank you.
[01614-EN.01] [Original text: English]
[B0867-XX.02]
