Laudato Si’ Action Plan Newsletter for October 2026, No. 19
Welcome to the nineteenth edition of the Laudato Si’ Action Plan Newsletter of the Carmelite PCM Province. This electronic newsletter is intended to inform the members and partners of this province on our collective commitment to living the values of Laudato Si’ –hearing and responding to the cries of the earth and the cries of the poor. It is prepared by Laudato Si’ Action Plan Coordinator, Dennis Kalob.
LAST CALL!
October 4 is the deadline for getting your new or updated Laudato Si’ Action Plans to me in order to be included in the revised province-wide report.
If you might need a few extra days to work on it, that will be okay. If you need longer than a week, please notify me that it will soon be on the way. I do not want to leave anyone out!
You can find the current PCM Province’s Laudato Si’ Action Plan here. Please send questions and comments, as well as new/revised action plans to me, Dennis Kalob, Laudato Si’ Action Plan Coordinator: LSCoordinator@Carmelites.net.
The Feast of St. Francis of Assisi
The Season of Creation ends on October 4, the Feast of St. Francis.
“This year’s Feast of St. Francis program, All of Creation Sings, will guide participants through 90-minutes of prayer, reflection, discussion, and suggested actions.”
Click here for more information. Thanks to Catholic Climate Covenant for providing this beautiful program for this very special day.
Plastics: Even Worse Than You Think
On September 10, there was a wonderful webinar titled, Moving Beyond Plastics in a “Throwaway Culture,” sponsored by Catholic Climate Covenant, Franciscan Action Network, Franciscan Federation, and Interfaith Public Health Network. It features Judith Enck, President of Beyond Plastics (BeyondPlastics.org). You can watch this one-hour webinar by clicking this link. Here are just a few facts on the subject that were presented in the webinar:
- More than half of all plastics ever produced have been produced since the year 2000.
- Global plastic waste is expected to triple by 2060.
- We are eating, drinking and breathing microplastics, along with the thousands of chemicals that are used to create plastic products.
- Microplastics are in our bodies, including in our blood and in our brains, with serious negative consequences for our health.
- Babies are born already with microplastics in their tiny bodies.
Plastics are an environmental, public health and moral issue which desperately needs to be addressed. So, please consider greatly limiting the purchase and use of plastic products, especially all of those single use items (like those grocery bags and water bottles).
Check out the webinar and please take action in your communities and ministries!
Priests Against Genocide
Preaching the Gospel in the Time of the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza is a webinar that was presented on August 31 by Priests Against Genocide. You can watch this powerful webinar by clicking this link.
Faith in Action – Two Great Videos
Here is an interview I highly recommend, which was conducted by Ken Pino (of our Carmelite Media office) with Gina Loiacono from St. Thérèse Parish in Cresskill, NJ. The focus of the interview is the parish’s new Social Concerns Room, where good people are serving others with humility and grace.
Here is a short, but deeply moving documentary about the Sisters of Charity in New York. I found it to be a powerful and inspiring story of faith, justice and love. They have a history of getting into “good trouble,” as the late John Lewis would say. HOLY TROUBLE, as the sisters say! Please watch this video. I think you will say it was 27 minutes well spent. Thank you, sisters, for modeling for all of us a faith that does justice!
“A faith that does justice is a fundamental description of what it is to be a disciple of the Lord.”
— Pedro Arrupe, SJ
“For the Christian community, social justice is a concrete way of following Jesus and remaining faithful to the Gospel.”
– Pope Leo XIV