In his Canticle of the Creatures, St. Francis of Assisi calls all creatures his brothers and sisters. Pope Francis directly refers to the Canticle of the Creatures in his ecological encyclical Laudato si’. In 2025, the Canticle of the Creatures will turn eight hundred years old. Therefore, the Foederatio Europae Mediae et Orientalis (FEMO) has already established a committee to organize the jubilee celebrations for the Canticle, one of the best known and loved texts in Christian literature.
The committee’s main objective is to prepare the central jubilee celebrations in 2025, which will be held in Kalwaria Pacławska, near Przemyśl, Poland. The committee will also be coordinating the local celebrations and events that will accompany them. It will promote these events through the media, in order to show the relevance of the message of St. Francis, who is the author of the Canticle and the Patron Saint of Ecology, and to promote Franciscan ecological thought as well as the protection of creation and the climate.
In a letter of appointment signed by the FEMO President, Friar Wojciech KULIG, and the FEMO Secretary, Friar Piotr MATUSZAK, we read: “The committee, headed by Friar Stanisław JAROMI, shall collaborate with the FEMO Jurisdictions and their friaries, with the Commission for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation of the FEMO Federation and with the competent institutions and works.” The other members of the committee are Friars Krzysztof HURA, Dariusz WIŚNIEWSKI, Jan Maria SZEWEK, Andrzej ZALEWSKI and Łukasz GORA.
St. Francis of Assisi wrote the Canticle of the Creatures a year before his death, while he was almost completely blind. He refers to all creatures as his brothers and sisters because they, like mankind, have the same Father, God the Creator. “In beautiful things [St. Francis] contuited Beauty itself and through the footprints impressed in things he followed his Beloved everywhere, out of them all making for himself a ladder through which he could climb up to lay hold of him who is utterly desirable.” (Major Legend 9:1; FF 1162).
The superiors of the Franciscan Family regard the Canticle of the Creatures anniversary celebrations as an opportunity for a radical change in our relationship with creation, a change that consists in replacing our need to possess with caring for our common home.
Caring for our common home without taking care of our inner home, our heart, is not the right path. We need conversion that is both ecological and integral, because the ecological crisis also calls us to a profound interior conversion, as the “green encyclical” reminds us.
Friar Jan M. SZEWEK