Catholic Earthcare Australia is an agency of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and is the environmental arm of the Catholic Church in Australia. This executive agency of the Bishops' Commission for Justice and Development (BCJD) is mandated with the mission of advising, supporting and assisting the BCJD in responding to Pope John Paul II's call to "stimulate and sustain the ecological conversion" throughout the Catholic church in Australia and beyond. [1]
In May 2017, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference decided to incorporate Catholic Earthcare Australia into its sister agency, Caritas Australia. This change was made to strengthen the capacity of Catholic Earthcare Australia, particularly in advocating and educating about the principles of Holy Father's 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si', and to achieve synergies with Caritas Australia's extensive education and advocacy work around Australia, including parishes, schools and the wider Catholic community on environmental issues such as climate change. [2]
After the Laudato Si' Action Platform was created and the Plenary Council decreed that all schools, parishes, eparchy's, organisations and diocese were to have a Laudato Si' action plan by 2030, Catholic Earthcare Australia was tasked by the Australian Catholic Bishops to support in the rolling out of this initiative. To support each sector in their endeavour to create a plan to respond to the 7 Laudato Si' goals, an Australian Guide to Laudato Si' action planning was created. As well as documents to support self-assessment, reflection and planning processes to align with the Laudato Si' action platform.
Catholic Earthcare also coordinates a number of state and community networks for the purpose of resource sharing, providing advice and strengthening the Australian Catholic Church's response to care for our common home.
Catholic Earthcare Australia will act as an advisory agency to the BCJD on ecological matters, including the safeguarding of the integrity of creation, environmental justice and ecological sustainability.
Environmental protection, or environment protection, is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, groups and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where it is possible, to repair damage and reverse trends.
The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, commonly known as CAFOD, is an international development and relief charity. It is the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Spiritual ecology is an emerging field in religion, conservation, and academia that proposes that there is a spiritual facet to all issues related to conservation, environmentalism, and earth stewardship. Proponents of spiritual ecology assert a need for contemporary nature conservation work to include spiritual elements and for contemporary religion and spirituality to include awareness of and engagement in ecological issues.
Catholic social teaching (CST) is an area of Catholic doctrine which is concerned with human dignity and the common good in society. It addresses oppression, the role of the state, subsidiarity, social organization, social justice, and wealth distribution. CST's foundations are considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum, which advocated distributism. Its roots can be traced to Catholic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo. CST is also derived from the Bible and cultures of the ancient Near East.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. Founded in 1943 by the Bishops of the United States, the agency provides assistance to 130 million people in more than 110 countries and territories in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Environmental planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out land development with the consideration given to the natural environment, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic framework to achieve sustainable outcomes. A major goal of environmental planning is to create sustainable communities, which aim to conserve and protect undeveloped land.
Religion and environmentalism is an emerging interdisciplinary subfield in the academic disciplines of religious studies, religious ethics, the sociology of religion, and theology amongst others, with environmentalism and ecological principles as a primary focus.
Christian views on environmentalism vary greatly amongst different Christians and Christian denominations.
Community forestry is a participatory model of forestry that gained prominence in the 1970s in which local communities take an active role in forest management and land use decision making. Community forestry is defined by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations as "any situation that intimately involves local people in forestry activity". Unlike centralized management systems, community forestry more strongly emphasizes the participation and collaboration of local community stakeholders, along with government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The level of involvement of each of these groups is dependent on the specific community forest project, the management system and the region.
Sandro Calvani, is the Senior Adviser on Strategic Planning for the Mae Fah Luang Foundation, Bangkok, Thailand.
Edwin Gariguez is a Filipino religious leader and environmentalist. He was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2012, for his voicing of protests on behalf of indigenous communities against large scale mining projects in the Philippines. Edwin Gariguez was the former executive secretary of National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA), the humanitarian, advocacy and social development arm of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
Laudato si' is the second encyclical of Pope Francis, subtitled "on care for our common home". In it, the Pope criticizes consumerism and irresponsible economic development, laments environmental degradation and global warming, and calls all people of the world to take "swift and unified global action". The encyclical, dated 24 May 2015, was officially published at noon on 18 June 2015, accompanied by a news conference. The Vatican released the document in Italian, German, English, Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese and Arabic, alongside the original Latin.
Caritas Internationalis is a confederation of 162 national Catholic relief, development and social service organisations operating in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. The name Caritas Internationalis refers to both the global network of Caritas organisations and to its general secretariat based in the Vatican City in Rome, Italy.
CIDSE, which is short for "Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité", is an international family of Catholic social justice organisations from Europe and North America and its international secretariat is based in Brussels.
Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, SVD (菊地 功, born 1 November 1958) is a Japanese Catholic prelate who has served as Archbishop of Tokyo since 2017 and president of Caritas Internationalis since May 2023. He was Bishop of Niigata from 2004 to 2017. He previously worked as a missionary in Ghana. He is a member of the Divine Word Missionaries.
Laudato Si' Movement (LSM) is a global network of over 900 Catholic organizations and over 10,000 trained grassroots leaders known as Laudato Si' Animators. Inspired by the Laudato si' encyclical of Pope Francis, LSM's stated mission is to "inspire and mobilize the Catholic community to care for our common home and achieve climate and ecological justice".
Caritas Australia is an Australian Catholic agency for development cooperation and humanitarian aid.
Caritas Slovenia is a Slovenian Catholic charity organisation. It operates nationally by providing social welfare services, and internationally by supporting the relief and development efforts of partner organisations.
Caritas Uganda is the official social development arm of the Catholic Church in Uganda. It has been operating since 1970 and is implementing social welfare and development projects all over the country, while also acting as a humanitarian relief agency when needed. Caritas Uganda is a member of Caritas Africa and of Caritas Internationalis.
Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand is a not-for-profit social justice and humanitarian relief organisation in New Zealand.