Laudato Si'

Background and Occasion

Laudato Si’ takes its title from the opening words of St Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures, in which the saint praises God through “Sister, Mother Earth”. Signed on the solemnity of Pentecost 2015 and published on 18 June, it was the first encyclical devoted to the environment. It was addressed not only to Catholics but to every person living on this planet.

Concern for the natural world was not new in papal teaching. Paul VI had warned of ecological catastrophe in 1971; John Paul II spoke of human ecology and ecological conversion; Benedict XVI was sometimes called the “green Pope”. Francis draws on all three, and also on the teaching of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and on episcopal conferences around the world. The encyclical appeared months before the UN climate conference in Paris and was widely read as a contribution to it.

Structure

The encyclical has six chapters: What is happening to our common home; The Gospel of creation; The human roots of the ecological crisis; Integral ecology; Lines of approach and action; and Ecological education and spirituality. It ends with two prayers, one for all who believe in a Creator and one for Christians.

Central Teaching

What is happening

The first chapter surveys pollution and waste, the climate as a common good, access to drinking water, the loss of biodiversity, the decline in the quality of human life, and global inequality. Its recurring theme is that the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are one: environmental damage falls hardest on those least able to protect themselves. Francis relies on the scientific consensus on climate change while acknowledging that the Church does not settle scientific questions.

The Gospel of creation

The second chapter is the theological foundation. The creation accounts in Genesis teach that human life rests on three fundamental relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth. Sin has ruptured all three. The command to “have dominion” (Genesis 1:28) does not justify absolute domination; it is to be read with the command to “till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15), a relationship of responsible care. Creatures have value in themselves, not only in their usefulness to us, and the whole universe moves forward with us towards its fulfilment in God. Francis presents creation as a gift and a reflection of God’s goodness, in continuity with Aquinas’s teaching that the diversity of creatures together represents God’s goodness better than any one creature could.

The human roots of the crisis

The third chapter offers the encyclical’s main diagnosis. The crisis is caused by the technocratic paradigm: a way of thinking that treats nature as raw material to be manipulated without limit, measures everything by technical power and profit, and assumes that growth can be infinite. Linked to it is a misguided anthropocentrism, in which man sets himself up in place of God. But Francis is equally critical of the opposite error, which treats human beings as just one more species and fails to see their unique dignity. He insists that concern for nature is incompatible with the justification of abortion, and that care for creation and for human life stand or fall together.

Integral ecology

The fourth chapter proposes an integral ecology: environmental, economic, social and cultural questions are inseparable, because everything is connected. It includes a human ecology, which accepts the body as God’s gift, including its meaning as male or female, and it places the common good and justice between generations at the centre.

Action, education and spirituality

The fifth chapter calls for dialogue at every level, from international policy to local communities, and for honest debate between politics, economics and religion. The sixth chapter turns to the person. It calls for an ecological conversion: a change of heart that sees the effects of our encounter with Christ in our relationship with the world. It proposes a spirituality of moderation, contemplation and gratitude, including grace before meals and Sunday rest, and it sees the Eucharist as the place where creation finds its greatest exaltation.

Theological Significance

Laudato Si’ brought the doctrine of creation into Catholic social teaching in a new way. Its theological core is classical: the world is created good by God, ordered to him, and entrusted to human stewardship; sin disrupts that order; redemption in Christ restores it and points to its final transformation. What is new is the application of this doctrine to the ecological crisis and the claim that environmental damage is a moral question tied to justice and the dignity of the person.

The encyclical’s scientific and policy discussions are the kind of content Gaudium et Spes described as contingent, open to debate in a way its doctrinal principles are not. Its critique of the technocratic paradigm was taken up by Leo XIV in Magnifica Humanitas (2026), which applies it to artificial intelligence. Francis issued a follow-up apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, in 2023.

For readers of this site, the encyclical connects the tract on Creation and the Supernatural Order with social teaching, and its account of the relationship between human beings and the rest of creation complements the Thomistic philosophy of nature presented on catholicphilosophy.info.