Manila’s Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle opened the “Season of Creation” on September 1st with a Mass celebrated at the National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Baclaran, Parañaque City. In it, he offered some of the most impassioned environmental words to date by a Prince of the Church.
Indeed, from the archbishop to the archdiocese’s environmental minister Lou Arsenio, to lay faithful, religious, and clerics taking part in the Season, the Catholic Church in the Philippines is making a commanding statement not just in its own nation but very far beyond its borders.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer chronicled the archbishop’s homily, which stressed the Catholic role in environmental appreciation and protection.
“God’s creations should be given importance and not taken for granted,” he said.
“We should be thankful for the sunrise, sunset, flowers, grass and rivers, among others.” He added that “[s]adly, for some people they seem to be ordinary and go unnoticed.”
He said that Filipino Catholics “should be awed and celebrate all creations of God.” Like Pope Francis and his predecessors, the archbishop called for changes in lifestyles so that humanity lives in accord with the laws of nature.
The archbishop then stressed...