Third CYNESA Youth Summit: Discerning God’s Call in the Post-Francis Era

Since its incorporation in 2014, the Catholic Youth Network for Environmental Sustainability in Africa has seen remarkable growth and achieved international applause. It has brought together Catholic youth in the service of caring for the African continent, celebrated and championed Pope Francis’s eco-encyclical Laudato Si’, and assisted with World Youth Day eco-events. They’ve also constantly sought funding, balanced international and local demands, and maintained their mission during global upheavals, most especially the COVID-19 pandemic.

In short, it’s been quite a decade—and now, with a new Supreme Pontiff and new global realities, CYNESA will again come together, learn from the past, and seek to discern whatever God has planned for the future.

I covered the first CYNESA organizational gathering in 2014, when the fledgling group, having received a small seed grant, took its first step to coordinate the eco-activities of Catholic youth across multiple local chapters.

“The idea back then was to bring together the leaders of the CYNESA chapters for the first time,” CYNESA founder and executive director Allen Ottaro told Catholic Ecology last week. “I knew every chapter leader from my work with the Jesuit Youth Ministry. But they didn’t know each other.”

In bringing the CYNESA teams under one roof, they could build something together, Ottaro said.

“That first gathering was in Nairobi. Together, we listened to how the Holy Spirit was moving us—individually and as chapters—and in sharing that, we could come up with a common plan.”

With a papal nuncio and other Church leaders in attendance and showing open support for the group, Ottaro realized the possibilities of what the organization could achieve. “It lit a fire within us!” he said.

Providentially, 2014 was the year in which Rome was seeking to build networks in preparation of Pope Francis’s eco-encyclical. CYNESA was a natural fit.

“Laudato Si’ in 2015 was a big moment,” Ottaro remembered. “Not just here in Africa; it was big everywhere. At CYNESA, 2014 felt like we knew we were going on a trip, but we still were not sure where we were going. So, we were looking for signs, as if on an actual road trip before we had GPS. And the signs came! Laudato Si’ was a major sign at that moment of our work ahead.”

Ottaro recalls that first year also saw his involvement in the development and launch of the then Global Catholic Climate Movement (now the Laudato Si’ Movement), as well as the institution of Rome’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (which would be the home for the Church's eco-efforts), and other initiatives across African and around the globe.

“Sometimes it was a bit overwhelming,” Ottaro recalls, saying he had to maintain both an international presence and a local one to better coordinate global activities with events on the front lines of local CYNESA chapters.

Five Years of Fast-Paced Growth—and the COVID Pause

That global-local balance continued for Allen and all of CYNESA for the first five years of its work. In 2019, Allen came to the United States for the first time by invitation of Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Diocese of Providence. He spoke at several events coordinated by the diocese and Providence College before leaving to network elsewhere in the US. CYNESA was growing as the global Church’s eco-efforts were accelerating—and then, of course, in 2020 everything came to a halt.

In a way, Ottaro reflects, the pause brought by the COVID lockdown was welcome. It offered a time of quiet and reflection on all that had happened since CYNESA’s first gathering in 2014—and since the release of Laudato Si’. Yes, work continued. In-person meetings became Zoom calls. Plans and strategies were developed via email. But the physical distance that was overcome by technology was replaced by a different kind of distance—and soon, the screens took their toll. The early 2020s saw the fast-paced CYNESA networks difficult to maintain—a reality experienced by global eco movements within the Church and everywhere.

And then, in 2023, as the world was long reopened and the ten-year anniversary of CYNESA approached, it was time to reconnect.

“After COVID, we needed a summit to create opportunities for members and others to share stories,” Ottaro said. “For sharing experiences of our common home and re-strengthen bonds of friendship. Our vocation is this work! We are all connected! No matter if there’s funding or not, CYNESA doesn’t stop.”

This led to the first of what would become an annual “Laudato Si’ Youth Summit” in Arusha, Tanzania in 2023. One year later, Nairobi would host the second such summit, and now, this weekend, CYNESA will hold its third in a first-ever location.

“These moments of meeting and sharing and praying,” Ottaro said, “they help us discern where to go and how to go the extra mile. What more can we do? What is God calling us to?”

A new location, a new beginning

During the early stages of planning this week’s summit, part of the answer of where to go was clear: To western Africa, where CYNESA has been growing these past few years. Hosted by CYNESA’s Ghana chapter, the three-day event will include a robust variety of liturgies, prayers, devotions, talks, discussions, and presentations—all looking back ten years to the beginning of CYNESA and forward to the mission ahead. The closing will include a statement for release by the Youth of Faith in Africa and, of course, many plans and friendships to carry the expanding group over the next decade.

The location of Accra, Ghana is significant in several ways, Ottaro said. This will be the first such CYNESA summit in a western African nation—and Ghana is home to Peter Cardinal Turkson, the first prefect of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development. Moreover, Accra is host to the secretariat of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.

The location will also allow for a march to an illegal Galamsey mining site where the Divine Mercy Chaplet will be recited.

That powerful moment will be but one of the gatherings opportunities to reflect and even grieve. After all, last month’s death of Pope Francis marked a passage in the life of the Church and in the lives of many at CYNESA. The energy and authority brought to the global stage by Pope Francis also brought a fire to Catholic eco-efforts, one that was unlike any other experienced by many of the Church’s youth.

“In many ways, Pope Francis was the father of our efforts at CYNESA,” Ottaro said.

But, of course, there is great excitement about what energy and authority Pope Leo XIV will bring in his way to Catholic eco-efforts. And certainly, his namesakes have brought a great deal of good to the Church and the world. For the leaders at CYNESA, this bodes well for their mission.

To be sure: After this inspired gathering, there will be much to report next week (and in the weeks and months to come)!

For those of us watching from afar, let us lift our young African brothers and sisters in prayer as they come together this weekend, when the Marian month of May will give way to June—the month devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

May both Our Lady and the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus bless, protect, and inspire all attendees and presenters at CYNESA’s third youth summit. And may the work of this community continue to bring dialogue, healing, and understanding throughout Africa and to the rest of God’s creation.

PHOTO: 2024 assembly in Nairobi. In center, Apostolic Nuncio to Kenya, Archbishop Hubertus van Megen. (Courtesy CYNESA)