Pope’s September prayer intention: For the cry of the earth
Vatican news
In a video message accompanying his prayer intention for September, Pope Francis prays that “each of us may listen with our hearts to the cry of the earth and of the victims of environmental disasters and climate change, committing ourselves personally to taking care of the world in which we live.”
By Christopher Wells
Given the rising temperatures around the world, the earth can be said to have a “fever,” Pope Francis said in his video message announcing this month’s prayer intention.
The earth “is sick,” he continues, “like any sick person.”
“But do we listen to this pain?” he asks. “Do we hear the pain of the millions of victims of environmental disasters?”
In his message, the Holy Father emphasizes that it is the poor who suffer most from these disasters, highlighting in particular those who are forced to leave their homes because of floods, heat waves or drought.
Our response, he continues, must be global, involving not only ecological action but also “social, economic and political.”
“We must commit ourselves to the fight against poverty,” the Pope said, and to “the protection of nature” by making both personal and community changes.
Pope Francis’ prayer for the month of September – when the Church celebrates the “Season of Creation” – is “that each of us may listen with our hearts to the cry of the earth and of the victims of environmental disasters and climate change, committing ourselves personally to taking care of the world in which we live.”
Creation groans
The prayer intention for the month of September was developed in collaboration with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
In a press release accompanying the pope’s video message, the dicastery’s prefect, Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ, said: “Creation groans. Its suffering is caused by humans who were originally its guardians and who now subjugate it.”
However, Cardinal Czerny emphasizes in his Message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of CreationPope Francis invites Christians “to hope and act with Creation, which we could translate as ‘living in faith’.”
The prefect’s words are echoed by Father Frédéric Fornos, SJ, international director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, which publishes the pope’s prayer intentions each month. “The earth is crying,” he says, as are the victims of environmental disasters and climate change.
Pope Francis, he concludes, “invites us to prayer, because only prayer can awaken our anesthetized hearts.”
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