Pope’s environmental message can be tool to reach young, bishop says

Using the Pope’s encyclical on the environment to inform prayer and liturgy is “a proposal that the bishops can take up”, particularly as the language appeals to young people, the Bishop of Down and Connor has said.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic during a conference on Laudato Si’, hosted by the Society of African Missionaries in Dromantine, Co. Down, Bishop Noel Treanor said that in some ways this is already happening.

“Of course this is something that I think has been anticipated and fostered a little bit already by Trócaire which has prepared a very interesting package for schools and did so after the publication of Laudato Si’,” he said.

“I have indeed in the past seen instances of the celebration of liturgical events, the Sacraments themselves, the Eucharist, or other events of prayer services where the integration of the entirety of creation and of the created order of which we are part as human has been clearly thematised and reflected.”