If you read one piece about Laudato Si' this anniversary ...

I've been sitting out the one-year anniversary of Laudato Si' as I wrap up a manuscript, which is expected by an editor in July. But Dr. Chad C. Pecknold of Catholic University of America has penned a piece published today in ABC Religion and Ethics that says pretty much everything I'd like to say. He does it in his usual and most excellent way and complete with Hobbit holes.

And so allow me to introduce you to An Integral Ecology: Revisiting Laudato Si', One Year On as I dive into a week with a full-speed ahead focus on my manuscript. (Stay tuned for much more about that.)

One year ago, the Vatican released Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si'. It set off a global firestorm of media coverage unusual for papal encyclicals. Why?

The simple answer is that Pope Francis taps into many of our most fundamental crises in the world today, and connects them. It's not simply an encyclical about the environment, but one on "our common home."

Laudato Si' relates the environmental crisis to the social crises we are all experiencing in a globalized world, but he tells us what we already know: we are on a self-destructive path, and we need conversion.

Continue reading here.