In Chikwawa District, Malawi, a group of young Christian workers gathered under the hot May sun with shovels, seedlings, and a shared commitment.
“We planted 100 trees,” they wrote after the event. “We want to make it a habit and each year we will be making sure that we take this initiative to all our churches and in our communities.”
Thousands of miles away in Celestún, Mexico, community members navigated winding mangrove waterways together during a cleanup effort organized with local ecotourism workers who help protect the fragile ecosystem year-round. Reflecting on the experience, organizers wrote that the cooperative “thanks God for all the work, strength, money, courage and love to continue this beautiful labor.”
And in Pinchote, Colombia, local Catholic communities gathered not for a protest or conference, but for a simple, honest conversation about the seven Laudato Si’ Goals and the responsibility of caring for their territory together.
“The most beautiful thing,” organizers reflected, “is that faith did not remain in theory.”
That spirit — practical, local, and deeply human — defined Laudato Si’ Week 2026.
This year’s global celebration invited Catholics around the world to move “From Hope to Action,” and communities responded with extraordinary creativity and commitment. Coordinated by the Laudato Si’ Movement and the Laudato Si’ Action Platform alongside Catholic partners worldwide, the week became a living tapestry of ecological conversion expressed through prayer, restoration, education, and concrete local action.
By the end of the campaign:
- 1,104 new participants had registered through the Laudato Si’ Action Platform
- Communities carried out more than 1,500 ecological actions
- Participants from every inhabited continent contributed initiatives aligned with the seven Laudato Si’ Goals
But the real story of Laudato Si’ Week unfolded far beyond the numbers.
In Vietnam’s Lâm Đồng province, Catholics celebrated an outdoor Mass surrounded by forests and mountain landscapes at the Dalat pastoral center. Nearby in Hòa Ninh, community members gathered outdoors to learn about soil health and pray for the Earth together beneath banana trees and open skies.
Elsewhere, ecological spirituality took the form of neighborhood cleanups, tree planting campaigns, educational workshops, sustainable lifestyle commitments, and conversations within families and parishes about what ecological conversion looks like in everyday life.
Families played a particularly significant role this year, accounting for the vast majority of actions recorded through the platform. The strongest areas of engagement included sustainable lifestyles, ecological education, ecological spirituality, and responses to both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.
Throughout the week, communities also gathered online for prayer services, webinars, testimonies, and global formation events that connected local experiences to the broader mission of the Church.
One of the major highlights was the Creation Care Commissioning: A Blessing and Sending Forth, a global online gathering held during Pentecost weekend. 800 Participants from around the world joined for prayer, music, testimony, and a shared commissioning for ecological ministry.
The ceremony featured Laudato Si’ Animators from every continent alongside representatives from the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and Catholic leaders including Fr. Michael Perry, OFM and Monsignor Robert Vitillo, the focal point for the Laudato Si’ Action Platform.
Together, participants renewed a shared commitment to “hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor,” echoing the central vision of Laudato Si’.
This year’s celebration also unfolded amid growing global conversations around artificial intelligence, ethics, and human dignity. Yet amid rapid technological change and ecological crisis, Laudato Si’ Week offered something profoundly grounded: communities planting trees together, praying outdoors together, restoring waterways together, and rediscovering their relationship with creation and one another.
Ten years after the publication of Laudato Si’, the work for integral ecology continues to grow not only through awareness, but through ordinary people choosing to act where they are. During Laudato Si’ Week 2026, that hope became visible in forests, parishes, coastlines, farms, classrooms, and communities around the world.
This publication produced jointly by the Laudato Si’ Movement and the Laudato Si’ Action Platform