Father Michael G. Ryan, pastor of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, leads the blessing of the St. James kitchen garden. (Courtesy Patrick Barredo / OSV News / 2018)
By Anna Dougherty
OSV News
ARLINGTON, Texas — On a balmy day in Arlington, Carol Stilley walked through a garden created by members of the Most Blessed Sacrament Parish.
Bees traveled from flower to flower as stems stretched their leaves up to catch the morning sun. When Stilley looked above her, five monarch butterflies fluttered above her head. The monarchs had found the lantana plant — a delicate and colorful flower — that the parishioners had just planted to fuel the endangered butterflies’ migration.
Stilley sighed as she was struck by the beauty of it all.
The parish’s pollinator garden is one of many efforts by parishes across the U.S. to concretize the ideas in Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical on caring for creation, “Laudato Si’,” and its more recent counterpart, “Laudate Deum.” The papal teachings urge Catholics to care for the Earth through sustainable practices, while also demonstrating that caring for the environment and caring for human beings go hand-in-hand.
In 2015, Pope Francis wrote in “Laudato Si’” that “we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
Three years later, in “Laudate Deum,” the pontiff pleaded with even more urgency for environmental action: “I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”
Parishes around the United States have heard Pope Francis’ call and responded in force. From Cleveland to Seattle, parishes are moving toward the Holy Father’s vision of a more sustainable church and world.
Water conservation
Cleveland had a problem: When it stormed, stormwater drainage mixed with the overtaxed sewage system, dumping pollution into Lake Erie. To help lift the burden off the stormwater drainage system, the Northeast Ohio Sewer District offered grants to institutions that would redirect their stormwater into the ground.
When John Niedzialek heard about the grant opportunity, he encouraged his parish, Historic St. Casimir in downtown Cleveland, to apply. The church was a perfect candidate: Due to its urban location and asphalt parking lot, almost all of the stormwater on the campus went directly into the city sewers.
Niedzialek, a part-time resource protection specialist at the Lake Soil and Water Conservation District and an assistant professor of earth science at Lakeland Community College, said that Pope Francis’ writings as well as his own love for the environment motivated him to initiate the effort.
“We need … to be stewards of the land,” Niedzialek told OSV News. “When my grandchildren come to the church, I (tell) them that the work we are doing is to make the Earth a better place for future generations.”
According to information from Niedzialek and Father Eric Orzech, Historic St. Casimir’s pastor, the church received the $168,000 grant in 2016 and used it to replace the parking lot with permeable pavers, install rain barrels and redirect storm water into gardens with native plants.
The effort has reduced runoff by 820,000 gallons every year, according to a report by the Northeast Ohio Sewer District on the project.
“In ‘Laudato Si’,’ the section with our Holy Father’s appeal called for unifying the whole human family in an effort to maintain our common home,” Father Orzech told OSV News in an Aug. 20 email. “This is exactly — on a commensurate scale — what our project did.”
The parish has served as a model for other churches in the area. After it received the grant, other churches in the area applied for the Northeast Ohio Sewer District grant as well.
Gardening to feed the poor
Patrick Barredo, the director of social outreach and advocacy and staff liaison for the care for creation group at St. James Cathedral in Seattle, heads a project that serves people in poverty by serving the Earth. The Cathedral Kitchen dinner program feeds over 150 meals each weeknight to people with low incomes or who are experiencing homelessness and uses the produce that the cathedral’s care for creation team grows on the grounds of the Cabrini sisters, located just a few blocks from St. James.
“St. James is a part of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, whose first two goals are to listen to ‘the cry of the Earth’ and ‘the cry of the poor.’ The Kitchen Garden allows us to respond to those two goals at the same time, by cultivating the earth to produce food to feed the hungry,” Barredo said.
The cathedral also hosts an annual environmental fair to educate parishioners on sustainable practices, such as using LED bulbs or best gardening practices.
Barredo said that the cathedral is “trying to live as a culture of encounter.”
“As a human community we are susceptible to the throwaway culture, where everything and everyone can be looked on as a resource to be used and then disposed (of),” he said. “Pope Francis is calling us to live in relationship with one another and with the earth, recognizing the inherent good that all people and all things have.”
Native landscaping
Every year, monarch butterflies rest in Arlington, Texas, on their long migration route from Mexico to the northern U.S. In 2021, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature classified the species as endangered. The decline in the colorful butterflies population is due, in part, to the diminishing supply of plants such as milkweed and lantana that nourish the butterflies’ long journey.
Most Blessed Sacrament in Arlington aims to be a waystation for butterflies and other important pollinators. Native, drought-tolerant plants — which require less water to thrive than plants not native to Texas and attract pollinators — surround the sign that bears the name of their parish. The garden was created by members of Caring for God’s Creation Ministry, headed by parishioner Carol Stilley.
Stilley said “Laudato Si’” and “Laudate Deum” have directly inspired the ministry.
“Pope Francis was very instrumental in all of us feeling passionate about it,” she said. “It’s not just about the climate. It is about relationships: relationship with each other, relationship with God, and relationship with nature. That is integral ecology.”
The ministry, founded in May 2023, also has planted a plot at the Lake Arlington Native Plant and Pollinator Garden, which is owned by the city of Arlington, and plans to expand the pollinator garden on their campus into an area of lawn that is not in use. Stilley said the group is starting with small projects like adding a water bottle refill station outside the adjoining school’s gymnasium and replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs.
Green construction
Since the promulgation of Francis’ encyclicals, many other parishes have launched ministries that seek to materialize their ideals. St. Anthony in Sacramento, California, installed solar panels, which were blessed by Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto. St. Thomas Becket in Eagan, Minnesota, hosts lectures about fair trade and best gardening practices. A coalition of North Florida Catholics, Big Bend Catholics Caring for Creation, educates and advocates for change in Tallahassee, Florida.
Jay Gilchrist, chair of the St. Thomas More Green Team in Coralville, Iowa, said he has seen climate change rapidly unfold in Iowa. He knew they had to do something.
“The climate is changing; the natural areas are disappearing. Iowa, right where we live, used to be all prairie and woodlands,” he told OSV News. “Now there is very, very, very little prairie and the woodlands have greatly diminished too because of agriculture.”
When the number of St. Thomas More parishioners outgrew the size of their church, Gilchrist and others at St. Thomas More decided to combat the effects of Iowa’s changing climate by encouraging the parish to implement sustainable construction practices. The addition to the church — which, like the original church building, will be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified — will have an energy-efficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, light fixtures with occupancy sensors, roller shades and double insulated windows.
“When Pope Francis tells us in ‘Laudate Deum’ that we need to change the way that we relate to the Earth, we are trying to take that seriously,” Gilchrist said. “We really need to put our feet on the ground … to listen to the voices of the poor and the voices of the Earth.”
