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(Vatican Radio) Two years on from its publication, Pope Francis’ encyclical 'Laudato Si’ continues to be a powerful point of reference for all people seeking to provide better protection of Planet Earth for future generations.

The eagerly awaited document on ‘Care for our common home’ was signed by the pope on May 24th 2015 and presented at a high profile press conference in the Vatican three weeks later.

Earlier this month, Irish Bishop Paul Tighe, adjunct secretary at the Pontifical Council for Culture, and Kerry Robinson, founding executive director of the U.S. National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, came together at Rome’s Lay Centre to discuss the impact of the document.

At the conference, entitled "Caring for our common home, caring for each other" they were joined by members of the Holy See’s diplomatic corps and by students from the Cambridge Muslim College in the UK and from the Center for Islamic Theology at Germany’s Tübingen University.

Just ahead of the event, we asked the Lay Centre’s Filipe Dominguez to speak to Kerry Robinson about the impact of 'Laudato Si’ on the Church in the United States….

Listen:

Robinson says the network of ordained religious and lay leaders with whom she works is focused on the complex challenges in management facing the Catholic Church today. These people, she says, have reacted positively to the document, seeing it as a “motivating factor for us to continue strengthening the Church”. She notes it is written to “all people, not just Catholics, raising up the important need for us all to be better stewards of the earth”.

Pope Francis, she says, does “a masterful job in connecting many of the social ills within this one document”, so it’s not just about the earth and climate change, but also about the inequity of wealth and a critique of unbridled capitalism, as well as "a clarion call" about the disproportionate effect on the poor that climate change has”.

Focus on people, not profits

She notes that some business people have found the document to be “personally challenging” but most regard it as “an important beginning of the conversation”, to which they have something extremely valuable to contribute. The Pope, she insists, is “inviting people to encounter the other, to examine our own conscience and to work together for solutions”, not focusing only on profits for shareholders, but also on concern for human dignity.

Is money holy, or sinful?

Robinson says she has spent "all my adult life thinking about the role of money, is money holy or sinful?” There is a tremendous theological ambivalence about money, she says, and while she doesn’t have the answer, she says she knows the question is an important one to wrestle with.

Faith communities coming together

When considering the problems of fragile ecosystems, human trafficking, forced migration and extreme poverty, she says, it’s easy to tend towards despair. Yet the actions of leaders of all faiths, coming together around these common concerns facing our world is a sign of hope for people of all or no faith.

Fear must not be used to demonise

Robinson says she is “proud to be American” but she is also concerned about the suffering she sees around her and the response of populist politics at this time. “When I see fear as a primary motivation factor to keep people apart, or demonise one another, I know it’s not of the Spirit”, she says.

(Laura Ieraci also contributed to this interview)

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Vatican City, May 5, 2017 / 10:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis told seminarians studying in Rome to resist complacency and to think of their studies as strength training for their hearts and wills, preparing them for service to others.

“Your College is increasingly a ‘gym’ where you work out to give your life with willingness; your studies are tools of service for the Church, which also embellish the rich cultural tradition of your beloved country,” he said May 5 to the community of the Pontifical Romanian College.

“To treasure, through prayer and intense study, what the Lord has done in his People, is a beautiful opportunity in the years you spend in Rome, where you can breathe the universality of the Church.”

Pope Francis met with the community at the Vatican's Consistory Hall to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the college's founding.

In his speech, the Pope reflected on the history of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church of the Byzantine rite which came into full union with the Bishop of Rome in 1700.

In the 20th century the Church was persecuted under communism and forced underground, only re-emerging 40 years later after the fall of the communist regime in 1990.

After these difficulties, the Church in Romania is now experiencing a “beautiful rebirth,” Francis said, with new challenges to face. But “this story, made of great witnesses of faith and moments of trial, of severe winters and of flourishing springs, belongs to you,” he said.

It is good to remember this story, not as way to stay stuck in the past, but embracing each era of the Church as it comes, always remaining open to the actions of the Holy Spirit, the Pope continued.

Remembering the recent history of the Church in Romania will help them to overcome the temptation to settle for mediocrity, trying to lead “a ‘normal’ life,” Francis said, “where everything is without impetus and ardor, and where sooner or later you end up becoming the jealous keepers of your time, your security, your well-being.”

Instead, he urged them, aspire to a “passionate ministry” encouraged by the examples of your great witnesses of the faith.

“A Shepherd, as a disciple configured to Christ who gave his life ‘until the end’ (John 13:1), cannot allow himself to come to terms with a mediocre life or to adapt to situations without risking anything.”

“To guard over the memory, then, is not simply to remember the past, but to lay the foundation for the future, for a hopeful future,” he said.

In addition to preserving the memory of the Church in their country, Pope Francis encouraged them to cultivate hope, saying it was his second wish for them.

“There is so much need to nourish Christian hope, that hope which gives a new outlook, capable of discovering and seeing good, even when it is obscured by evil,” he said.

In the liturgy during the Easter season we hear from the Acts of the Apostles how the early Church “persevered in prayer, communion, and charity,” the Pope said. They never lost sight of hope, and gave it to the world, “even when it is without means, unfinished and opposed.”

“I wish your home to be a cenacle where the Spirit plants missionaries of hope, infectious bearers of the presence of the Risen Lord, courageous in creativity and never disheartened to problems and shortages of means,” he said.

“May the Holy Spirit also arouse in you the desire to seek and promote, with purified heart, the path of concord and unity among all Christians.”

Pope Francis then turned to those present from the Pontifical College of St. Ephrem, which hosts student priests of the Eastern Catholic Churches who speak Arabic, and who are welcomed by the Pontifical Romanian College.

“By meeting you, I think of the situation in which there are so many faithful in your lands, many families, who are forced to leave their home in the face of the collapse of waves of violence and suffering,” he said.

“These brothers and sisters I want to embrace in a special way, together with their Patriarchs and Bishops.”

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Sydney, Australia, May 5, 2017 / 01:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For one critic, a report that IVF-conceived embryos are being cremated and turned into jewelry for their mothers shows the basic problem with the artificial creation of human embryos.

“I have no words. I have no category for who would think this would be something good to do,” said Jennifer Lahl, the founder and president of the California-based Center for Bioethics and Culture.

“It’s so undignified that these embryos have been destroyed to become jewelry,” she told CNA. “I thought, ‘My gosh, it really has hit rock-bottom’.”

Lahl, who has a background as a pediatric critical care nursing and hospital administration, has long been a critic of egg donation and IVF.

Now, the small Australian company Baby Bee Hummingbirds is turning embryos into keepsake jewelry.

A story in the Australian mothers’ website Kidspot portrays the process as a solution to “extra” embryos that are created in the in-vitro fertilization process. It recounts the story of a couple who had conceived three children, including twins, but faced financial strain in paying for the annual storage of the leftover embryos and could not imagine disposing of them or donating them.

“I don’t believe there is any other business in the world that creates jewelry from human embryos, and I firmly believe that we are pioneering the way in this sacred art, and opening the possibilities to families around the world,” Amy McGlade, the founder of Baby Bee Hummingbirds, told Kidspot.

Families send the jeweler IVF straws containing the embryos, which are cremated into embryo ash, which is then incorporated into the jewelry.

Since 2014, Baby Bee Hummingbirds has made 50 pieces of jewelry with embryos. About 4,000 of its other works of jewelry use breastmilk, placenta, hair, ashes, or umbilical cord stumps.

The pieces cost from $80 to $600.

“It’s special because the embryos are often signifying the end of a journey, and we are providing a beautiful and meaningful way to gently close the door,” McGlade said.

For Lahl, however, the process is no solution to frozen embryos.

“The solution is to stop creating surplus embryos. The solution is to stop freezing human embryos, so that parents aren’t left with these ethical dilemmas of what to do with them when they decide they don’t want any more children,” she said.

“If anything it creates even more complex ethical problems, a new novel way of disrespecting human life.”

Lahl objected that “creating life and calling it surplus” is “an undignified view of early, nascent human life.” She worried that IVF treatment and the creation of human embryos is the consequence of the belief that parents have “a right to pursue that child at whatever cost, and at whatever manner.”

“It loses sight of the fact that children are intended to be gifts and blessings, not something we have a right to.”

McGlade, the jewelry business founder, promoted the use of embryos in jewelry.

“Reactions from families who understand the journey are amazing and heartfelt. They are so grateful for our service,” she said. “What a better way to celebrate your most treasured gift, your child, than through jewelry? It’s about the everlasting tangible keepsake of a loved one that you can have forever.”

Kidspot cited one mother who had her embryos turned into jewelry through the business.

“I’d heard others had planted them in the garden but we move a lot, so I couldn’t do this,” said the mother, who had the seven embryos placed in a heart-shaped pendant. “I needed them with me.”

She said the six years of IVF treatment was “painful, tormenting, a strain on our marriage and just plain hard.”

“Finding this has brought me so much comfort and joy,” she said. “I finally at peace and my journey complete.”

“My embryos were my babies – frozen in time,” she said. “When we completed our family, it wasn’t in my heart to destroy them. Now they are forever with me in a beautiful keepsake.”

The Catholic Church stresses that all human life – including those in the embryonic state – have an invaluable human dignity. Catholic teaching opposes IVF.

However, Lahl stressed the need for compassion for those who have used IVF to treat infertility.

“We need to approach anybody struggling with infertility with a lot of grace and mercy,” she said. “We need to understand that infertility is a real grief. People just naturally assume that when they are ready to start their family that children will come. We have to be incredibly understanding.”

“We also have to be prepared with the facts on what is really involved in reproductive technology. People are uninformed about the risk of these technologies, the ethics of using these technologies and all the problems that come about.”

She said in-vitro fertilization is “fraught with ethical problems” due to the health risks to the mother, the conceived children, the cost, and the way in which the use of medicine creates more problems, rather than treats and heals conditions.

“Most of the people who enter into the assisted reproductive technology enterprise don’t get a baby,” she said. “Overwhelmingly, IVF cycles fail.”

The process has a high failure rate and typically costs six figures to successfully conceive and bear a child through IVF.

Lahl said others should consult resources about the field, such as the website of the CBC Network. Her network covers topics like infertility issues, egg donation, sperm donation, surrogacy, assisted reproductive technologies and their health risks to women.

Although she is not Catholic, she said Church teaching on these issues was “rich and important.”  

“I think the Catholic Church has gotten these issues quite right. If you really look at the evidence and the medical literature, it will only reinforce the teaching of the Catholic Church.”

 

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