Dear University Community,
Caring for God’s creation is central to who we are as human persons. Just as we respect all life from conception to natural death, we must also be concerned with the care of our planet and all creatures who inhabit it.
Today Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum calls on all of us to care for our common home. As a continuation of his message in the encyclical Laudato Si’, the Holy Father speaks to the shared responsibilities that individuals, corporations, governments, and other institutions have to address the issue of climate change, prevent environmental catastrophes, and provide justice to the millions of people who have been harmed by the degradation of our planet.
I should note that this is not an innovation of Pope Francis in our modern era. Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, reminded us that “the environment is God’s gift to everyone” and we have a responsibility to the poor and to future generations to care properly for it.
As the bishops’ university in the United States, The Catholic University of America is leading the way in heeding the Pope’s calls to make lasting changes in how we care for our environment. In 2021, we were one of the first universities in the United States to sign onto the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform initiative.
West Campus Solar Array. Patrick Ryan, University photographer.
Our most notable current initiative is the construction of a 6 MW ground-mounted solar array on our West Campus, which will be the District’s largest urban solar array when it goes live next spring. The project will provide locally generated, renewable energy to our campus, and to local residents and businesses. The array will save an estimated 7.115 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, and contribute to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s goals to make Washington, D.C. carbon-neutral and climate resilient by 2050. I encourage you to read more about our work on sustainability in this article.
I also suggest you take a look around campus and see how you can contribute individually to creating a more sustainable planet. We have a guide on the Catholic University sustainability website for how you can live more sustainably and additional resources. One of those that I think is most interesting is a map that shows our “green campus.” Pull up this map on your smartphone and take a walk around the campus and you will see all of the different places where we are putting into practice what the Pope has called us to do.
In the penultimate paragraph, Pope Francis makes the sobering observation that carbon emissions per individual in the United States are double those of the Chinese, and seven times higher than the emissions of the poorest nations. But he also notes that any changes made to decrease our emissions could have “significant long-term impact,” and could help to “progress along the way to genuine care for one another.”
To respect life in all of its forms is to also care for the environment in which we live. This is the message, and invitation, of Pope Francis. It is a message we are listening to — and that Catholic University is acting upon.
God bless,
Peter Kilpatrick
President
