General Chapter 28: Guideline n.8

Rector Major (Acts n. 433 - August 2020)

 

 

 

 

8. ACCOMPANYING THE YOUNG TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

 

 

 

We recognise that the focus on a sustainable future is a cultural conversion, not a fashion, and like any conversion needs to be strongly called by its new name.

 

The Chapter Assembly expressed itself with complete unanimity when it was suggested that a small commission take on the sensitivity, that is in us in the face of this emergency. Caring for creation is not a fashion. Humanity’s life is at stake, even though many public officials, prisoner to economic interests, look the other way or deny what is undeniable. This sensitivity materialised in a Chapter deliberation approved by the Assembly. Pope Francis insisted that we must avoid a “climate emergency” that risks “perpetrating a brutal act of injustice towards the poor and future generations.”[1]

 

 

 

Our commitment to an integral human ecology comes from a conviction of faith for which “everything is interconnected, and that genuine care for our own lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others”[2]. We cannot separate the care of the environment from the social life of human beings. Therefore, ecology must be integral, human. And, consequently, we are invited to an ecological conversion that concerns not only the economy and politics, but also social life, relationships, affectivity and spirituality.

 

 

 

In recent years we have witnessed disagreements by politicians from various countries in the face of this emergency. The last meeting of the leaders of the countries in Santiago de Chile (but held in Madrid, Spain) had as its only result the agreement to meet again in a year's time. No significant operational agreement.

 

At the same time, millions and millions of people, most of them young, have raised a cry worldwide. Pope Francis, sensitive to all this as he has so clearly shown, reminds us that young people themselves are asking for radical change and are asking “how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded”[3].

 

 

 

The proposal for a Chapter deliberation was expressed thus: “Together with Pope Francis, we recognise the evidence provided by science that the acceleration of climate change coming from human activity is real. Air pollution, water pollution, improper waste disposal, loss of biodiversity and other environmental issues that have a negative impact on human life are increasing. Unsustainable production and consumption are pushing our world and its ecosystems beyond their limits, undermining their ability to provide resources and actions vital to life, development and regeneration.”[4]

 

 

 

As I am writing these lines, planet Earth and all countries of the world have been impacted to greater or lesser degree by the COVID-19 virus that to date has caused 624,000 deaths and has infected 15,300,000 people. We know well that the life of a single human person is sacred, and that there is so much sorrow due to so many deaths. But it is no less true that planet Earth has been bleeding for decades, and that every year pollution causes many more human deaths than have been the result of COVID-19. This fact, unfortunately, is not taken so seriously.

 

 

It is no less true that the poorest (it is always the poorest!) suffer the disastrous effects of deforestation and changes in climate, the ruin of their very poor crops, their only resource for survival. This too is not denounced.

 

I could go on making a list of these situations. It is not necessary. It is enough to stress that as educators and pastors we cannot be indifferent to this reality. We have to do something.

 

 

 

 

 

PROPOSAL

 

 

 

Listening to the worldwide cry of so many young people today, WE SALESIANS COMMIT ourselves to BEING CREDIBLE WITNESSES, personally and as a community, of CONVERSION in caring for Creation and Ecological Spirituality.[5].

 

 

 

Therefore:

 

 

 

¨     Every province in the world will respond, through the Provincial Delegate for Youth Ministry, to the request to make our schools, education centres, university campuses, oratories, parishes, educational models of care for the environment and for nature. As a Salesian option in education we must include action on behalf of creation: care for nature, climate and sustainable development.

 

 

 

¨     As far as possible, let us expand the network of Salesian institutions to be included in the Don Bosco Green Alliance, fostering the participation of the young in global campaigns on behalf of the sustainability of environmental and ecological causes for the care of creation and human life.

 

 

 

¨     Let us accept the request made to GC28 by the Salesian Conference on Renewable Energy in November 2019, that the Congregation undertake to achieve 100% of renewable energy for all provinces around the world before 2032. Even though the reality of the Congregation is quite disparate across different countries, we accept this challenge in collaboration with the Provinces’ PDOs, Salesian NGOs, the DBN.