Newsletter for November 2025, No. 11

Laudato Si’ Action Plan Newsletter for November 2025, No. 11

“God will ask us if we have cultivated and cared for the world that He created, and if we have taken care of our brothers and sisters. What will be our answer?” –Pope Leo XIV

You may send your community’s or ministry’s action plan (or an updated existing plan) to Dennis Kalob at lscoordinator@carmelites.net to be included in our updated document. Direct any questions to Dennis at that email address.

To view the Province’s Laudato Si’ Action Plan, click here.

Thank you all most sincerely for your commitment to living the values and vision of Laudato Si’!

Raising Hope for Climate Justice

The Vatican sponsored the Raising Hope for Climate Justice conference, held 1-3 October 2025 at Castel Gandolfo. It marked the 10^th anniversary of the encyclical, Laudato Si’.

Watch here the very informative press conference that opened the 3-day event (it actually does not begin until the 6:30 mark in the video).

Here is Pope Leo’s full speech at the conference (just 10 minutes and well worth it).

You can watch a brief highlight video from the conference here.

Finally, here is an extended excerpt from the conference, which includes music, speeches and reflections.

Borgo Laudato Si’

“The beauty of the gardens of the Pontifical Villas becomes the natural setting for the development of a place of education for integral ecology, open to all people of good will. Pope Francis, by creating the Borgo Laudato Si’ in his residence at Castel Gandolfo, wanted to give a concrete sign of the applicability of the principles illustrated in the Encyclical Laudato Si’. The project is developed along three main lines: education for integral ecology, circular and generative economy, and environmental sustainability.”

Everyone is invited to visit!

Borgo Laudato Si’ was officially opened by Pope Leo on 5 September 2025. For more information click here.

The Most Pure Heart of Mary Province of the Carmelites and the next phase of our Laudato Si’ Action

By Dennis Kalob, Laudato Si’ Action Plan Coordinator

I would like to thank all of the Carmelites and associates who have submitted their Action Plans. Our first report summarizing the many individual plans was published in May. At the very beginning of October, we updated the report to include submissions we received over the summer months. You can view our updated Laudato Si’ Action Plan for the Province (which is really many individual plans from ministries and communities around the province) by clicking here.

I continue to be impressed by the commitment to live the values and vision of Laudato Si’—to hear and respond to the cries of the earth and the cries of the poor! It can be difficult sometimes to be hopeful in our very troubled world these days. But the Carmelites and their associates give me a great deal of hope!

Now on to the next stage of our work.

First, if your Carmelite community or ministry has not completed an Action Plan, it is never too late. Please contact me at lscoordinator@carmelites.net to either submit a plan or ask any questions you may have.

Then, we move forward together toward implementation. Each of the plans that were submitted included a list of actions already taken. But the plans, of course, also included a list of intentions to do more. Moving forward, I will be periodically reaching out to each of the ministries and communities to get a sense of the progress being made. As part of this outreach, I will be asking you “How can I help?” I want to be of service! You do not even have to wait to be contacted. Reach out to me anytime if there is anything at all I can do to help.

It is my goal to update our Province’s Action Plan next Season of Creation (in the fall of 2026) with updates on the progress being made by each of the communities and ministries.

Let me conclude with this thought: Your actions to care for all of creation not only help to protect and heal our planet, they serve as lessons for so many others, including parishioners and students. In this way, good works multiply many times over as the years pass, often in ways we may not obviously see, but certainly in ways that have incredible impact.

Thank you all so much for all that you do to care for creation!

2025 Advent Season

Catholic Climate Covenant has a wonderful collection of resources for Advent. Check it out here.

Good News!

If you missed it, we urge you to watch this fantastic news report about Carmel Catholic in Mundelein, IL. It is about their new, beautiful garden. Well done Carmel Catholic!

This Might Be of Interest

The Passionists have a multi-part program to engage in Laudato Si’. You may find it quite meaningful, informative and inspirational. You can find it here.

Pope Leo’s first Apostolic Exhortation:
Dilexi Te (“I Have Loved You”)

On 4 October 2025, Pope Leo XIV presented Dilexi Te, which was begun by his predecessor, Pope Francs. The focus of this apostolic exhortation is the poor and our Catholic/Christian responsibility to act with compassion and solidarity.

“By her very nature the Church is in solidarity with the poor, the excluded, the marginalized and all those considered the outcast of society. The poor are at the heart of the Church because ‘our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society’s most neglected members.’ In our hearts, we encounter ‘the need to heed this plea, born of the liberating action of grace within each of us, and so it is not a matter of a mission reserved only to a few’” (111).

The Carmelites are specifically mentioned by Pope Leo:

“In the thirteenth century, faced with the growth of cities, the concentration of wealth and the emergence of new forms of poverty, the Holy Spirit gave rise to a new type of consecration in the Church: the mendicant orders. Unlike the stable monastic model, mendicants adopted an itinerant life, without personal or communal property, entrusting themselves entirely to providence. They did not merely serve the poor: they made themselves poor with them. They saw the city as a new desert and the marginalized as new spiritual teachers. These orders, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Carmelites, represented an evangelical revolution, in which a simple and poor lifestyle became a prophetic sign for mission, reviving the experience of the first Christian community (cf. Acts 4:32). The witness of the mendicants challenged both clerical opulence and the coldness of urban society” (63).

Below are the last two, powerful paragraphs (120-121) of Dilexi Te:

“Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies. It spans chasms that are humanly impossible to bridge, and it penetrates to the most hidden crevices of society. By its very nature, Christian love is prophetic: it works miracles and knows no limits. It makes what was apparently impossible happen. Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.

“Through your work, your efforts to change unjust social structures or your simple, heartfelt gesture of closeness and support, the poor will come to realize that Jesus’ words are addressed personally to each of them: ‘I have loved you’ (Rev 3:9).”

For the full text of Dilexi Te, click here.

New Provincial Statement on Human Rights and Social Justice

In October, the Provincial Council approved a general statement of support of human rights and social justice, and encouraged it to be circulated in our communities and ministries. Below is the statement.

PCM Carmelite Human Rights and Social Justice Statement

The Most Pure Heart of Mary province of the Carmelites affirms its wholehearted embrace of Catholic Social Teaching, which requires all of us to work toward a more just and peaceful world, including care for all of creation.

With the courage of our faith, we stand firm in support of the common good and against all forms of bigotry, intolerance, hate and violence, including violence against the earth. We seek a world that respects the rights and dignity of all persons, promotes solidarity, and protects and nurtures our common home.

Let kindness and love fill our hearts and guide our actions.

We invite all members of the Carmelite family to share this vision and live these values.

Provincial Statements on Gaza and Migration

As has been previously announced, The Most Pure Heart of Mary Province has issued official statements on two critically important issues: the situation in Gaza and the migrant policy crisis we are experiencing in the U.S. (with impacts far beyond).

If you have not already done so, everyone is encouraged to read, reflect on, pray over, and act upon the messages in these provincial statements. They can be found here: https://carmelites.net/uncategorized/provincial-statements-on-gaza-and-migration/

Please understand that those who are suffering due to the mass arrest and deportation policies of our current federal administration in the U.S. and due to the war on Gaza need you. They all need you and your simple acts of solidarity and love. May we pray, preach, and act for peace, equality and justice.

The Church’s tradition of working for and with migrants continues, and today this service is expressed in initiatives such as refugee reception centers, border missions and the efforts of Caritas Internationalis and other institutions. Contemporary teaching clearly reaffirms this commitment. Pope Francis has recalled that the Church’s mission to migrants and refugees is even broader, insisting that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate. Yet these verbs do not apply only to migrants and refugees. They describe the Church’s mission to all those living in the existential peripheries, who need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.” He also said: “Every human being is a child of God! He or she bears the image of Christ! We ourselves need to see, and then to enable others to see, that migrants and refugees do not only represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved. They are an occasion that Providence gives us to help build a more just society, a more perfect democracy, a more united country, a more fraternal world and a more open and evangelical Christian community.” The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges. She knows that her proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome. And she knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.

–Pope Leo XVI (Dilexi Te, 75)