Our Executive Director, Susana Réfega, had the opportunity to share a moment with Pope Francis while participating in the symposium for the tenth anniversary of encounters involving popular movements, entitled “Planting a flag in the face of dehumanization”. There she spoke about the care of the common home and the Laudato Si’ Movement’s work during almost ten years.
Susana, as well as other representatives of popular movements, showed Pope Francis the work of LSM members around the world during the Season of Creation. She made special mention of Juan Lopez, a Honduran activist recently killed for defending the Earth, and of people in the Philippines who organized an event to defend the Fossil Fuels Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Read Susana’s full speech:
Message of Susana Réfega on the Occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of the First World Meeting of Popular Movements
Good morning. Thank you to Cardinal Czerny for his kind words of welcome, and warm greetings to my fellow colleagues. I would also like to thank the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development for enabling this special time, when we can strengthen a culture of encounter through this event that celebrates the tenth anniversary of the first World Meeting of Popular Movements. I am truly very happy, humbled, and inspired to hear, witness, and share our common struggles and achievements alongside the sisters and brothers gathered today around this table, in this room, and across the world.
As a member of a grassroots and popular movement and coordinating a secretariat team that serves the movement, I am able to testify to the precious role that people’s movements play, not only in the life of the Church, but in society and in the lives of so many women and men. The group to which I belong, Laudato Si’ Movement, was formed just before the publication of the Laudato Si’ encyclical. In the nine years since its founding, this movement has grown to encompass thousands of grassroots leaders and hundreds of member organizations in over 100 countries, becoming a global movement of people and a movement of movements.
Caring for mother Earth, denouncing the structural sins that have led us to the social and environmental crisis that we are facing today, and striving for climate justice is our way of fighting for tierra, techo, and trabajo for all. Indeed, those who contributed the least to climate change are the ones who suffer the most: the lands they cultivate flood and burn, their lodging is destroyed by storms, and their labor is invested in recovering from the sickness, hunger, and conflict that climate change brings. Right in front of our eyes our home is burning, and some elites keep adding fuel to the fire–literal fuel, fossil fuel.
We want change and we want to be the protagonists of our future. Right now we are in the midst of the Season of Creation, the annual celebration of prayer and action for our common home. The Season begins on September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, and it runs through October 4, the Feast of St. Francis. Throughout this month-long Season, Laudato Si’ Movement members and Christians around the world are acting, hoping, and praying with creation.
We are seeing the Holy Spirit at work in the way each local community uses its unique gifts to bring the Season of Creation to life. In Paraíba, Brazil, people who did not have the opportunity to attend school when they were young are now leading activities to educate others about integral ecology. In Techimantia, Ghana, women religious have developed a prayer service in the “cathedral of creation,” inspiring all with their reflections. In the Philippines, local leaders have organized a public event for the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty–a global initiative aimed at managing a just and equitable transition away from oil, gas, and coal–bringing together bishops, government agencies, and representatives of affected communities. As it happens, tomorrow, 21 September, there is a Global Day of Action for the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty. It’s a clear opportunity for popular movements, churches, and faith leaders to unite and demand the urgent phase-out of fossil fuels.
These are just a very few of the countless ways that grassroot leaders around the world are sowing seeds of hope during the Season of Creation. And the Season of Creation itself is just one way that communities are responding to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.
Every day, local leaders across the globe defend their territories from industries that harm the land and its people, while calling for a just energy transition. As Pope Francis said in his message to the first World Meeting of Popular Movements, “the lives of all take priority over the appropriation of goods by a few.” Tragically, the people’s right to live on a planet that abundantly provides for our needs is one that some powerful interests cannot abide.
In places like Honduras, Colombia, and the United States, just to name a few examples, the leaders of popular movements are too often harassed or even killed when they dare to call for their communities to be protected from fossil fuel extraction, mining, and logging.
Despite the challenges, popular movements show tremendous resilience and courage. In Honduras, the Laudato Si’ Movement chapter prays for Juan López, an activist who was recently killed for defending the land, while also co-leading a diploma course in integral ecology. In Colombia, where nearly 80 environmental defenders were killed in 2024, Laudato Si’ Animators are hosting ecological dialogues and preparing interventions for the U.N. meeting on biodiversity. In the United States, where clean energy advocates in the Permian Basin are often harassed, men and women are joining together to reflect on our faith’s teachings to care for the gift of creation.
The members of Laudato Si’ Movement, and of so many other popular movements, do their work not because it is easy, but because it is needed. Our members fight structural sin in all its forms, from unchecked greed for natural resources, to a willingness to trample the rights of vulnerable people, to an eagerness to pretend that it is easier to live on a destroyed planet than it is to pursue solutions like a just energy transition, changes in diet, and new forms of economy.
The people have a right to live in a world with a stable climate, clean water, and breathable air, a world that endures for our children and grandchildren. This is the world our Creator promised us. In order to protect it, each of us is called to join the ever-growing movements to care for creation, stop fossil fuel production, and care for each other in the way God intended.
Popular movements like Laudato Si’ Movement, and like so many others around the world and also present here today, are a useful correction to the status quo. Rather than concentrating power in the hands of the few, popular movements like ours rejoice in the distributed power of the many. We are committed to a better world and we know how to keep fighting through challenges to achieve change.
This week, here in Rome, I was attending a meeting at the Dicastery for Culture and Education, and in the corridors I was surprised by a marvelous exhibition by the artist Julie Polidoro. I was blessed by the fact that the artist was present that day, and I could hear first-hand her sharing about her work. Her work provokes emotion and reflection on our relationship with the world, with one another, and with many of the challenges we face, such as climate change and forced migration. I spent a long time contemplating the painting that gives name to the exhibition–a large painting with a deep sky and moving clouds of warm and unsettling colors. The painting’s title struck me as a metaphor of what we are as movements: “Today is Yesterday’s Tomorrow.”
“Today is Yesterday’s Tomorrow.” We pray that the Holy Spirit might always remind us and give us the strength to be conscious of our responsibility for today, as it is already the yesterday of tomorrow!