Dal Cantico delle Creature alla conversione ecologica nella Laudato si’

Abstract

Christians profess faith in God the Creator, who in his love placed man at the center of Creation so that he would take care of it. They profess also faith in Jesus Christ the Redeemer of the universe: “Christ is Lord of the cosmos and of history. In him human history and indeed all creation are «set forth» and transcendently fulfilled” (CCC, nr. 668). At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the ecological question in which God’s plan for creation and, in him, for man seems to have vanished. Tackling it is not just a technical question but requires a right vision and, indeed, an ecological conversion. Pope Francis, with the usual foresight and parresía that characterizes him, confessing his own path of ecological conversion – an expression learned from Saint John Paul II – , and inspired by the Canticle of the Creatures of Saint Francis of Assisi, has published the encyclical Laudato si’. With this article we want to introduce the reader to the reading of Laudato si’, focusing on the ecological question in its breadth of integral ecology, and launching the invitation to an ecological conversion that brings man back to his original relationship with himself, with other men, with Creation and with God.