St. Bartholomew Parish will host talk on Laudato Si’ Action Platform on Oct. 3

By Natalie Hoefer

A talk on “Living Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home from Global to Local” will be held at St. Bartholomew Parish in Columbus at 7 p.m. on Oct. 3.

The talk, sponsored by the parish’s Care for Our Common Home Ministry, will feature Andy Miller representing the archdiocesan Laudato Si’ Action Platform and Creation Care ministry. He will discuss the Action Platform and how it traces the Laudato Si’ movement globally, in the United States, across the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and down to your own home.

The Laudato Si’ Platform is a global initiative of the Vatican kicking off a seven-year effort to develop the Church’s ecological practices. It is inspired by Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.”

“The action platform is broken down into seven groups—parishes, religious communities, health care and others,” Miller explains. “Whatever entity you associate with, you can enroll to the platform and find resources for living an ecologically conscious life.”

The platform “changes our minds on how we think of the world now as lines drawn,” says Miller of Mundell & Associates in Indianapolis, whose owner John Mundell heads the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform.

“For instance, people talk about biomes now. We [in the archdiocese] live in the drainage basin for the Mississippi River. How do we identify not as Indiana or a certain county but as a center in water conservation?”

Those enrolled on the platform describe their own action plan to care for the environment, Miller explains.

“It’s cool that you can see what other people in the world are doing,” he says. “For instance, you can see what this family in Kenya is doing. Instead of using three gallons of water a day, they’re going to use two and a half.”

Miller will also discuss what he calls “a piece sometimes missed in the Laudato Si’ movement”: the call to conversion.

“Pope Francis is calling us to ecological conversion in our hearts,” he says. “Often, we think of conversion as a one-time thing, but how often does the Holy Spirit convict us to turn back to the Lord and say, ‘Change my heart?’

“We’re doing that on the ecology platform by allowing people to explore if there is something else they can do to change their life.”

The talk will also include ideas for how individuals and parishes can start taking action, “even if it’s just switching to LED lights or using more efficient appliances,” says Miller.

The presentation will be held in the parish hall at St. Bartholomew, 1306 27th St., in Columbus. All are invited, and refreshments will be served. †