What’s your plan for LS+1?

International Catholic eco-groups like the Global Catholic Climate Movement want you to know about “Laudato Si’ Week,” June 12th through the 19th, and they want us all to take part. The goal is to keep the spotlight on the Holy Father’s eco-encyclical, and to continue putting it into action.

To help, the GCCM has initiated “Laudato Si Animators,” which hopes to promote the messages of Laudato Si’ and help turn it into action in our local communities, "whether that be a parish, school, religious congregation, lay group, youth organization, retreat center, Boy Scout troop, or more.”

Laudato Si Animators is intended to be a global network of Catholics “committed to bringing Laudato Si to life.” Anyone who signs up as an Animator is asked to participate in online trainings with experts and environmental leaders to help organize around Laudato Si Week events. According to the GCCM, the initial period will be focused on organizing at least one Laudato Si' event in your community as part of Laudato Si Week.

Events can take the form of a workshop, prayer service, study group, nature walk, or a community service project.

Ensuring that Laudato Si’ remains alive and well is ultimately aimed at fostering the “ecological conversion” that Saint John Paul II urged during his pontificate. Without a conversion to a new way of seeing creation, and the gift of life within it, our current destructive trajectory will continue, accelerate, and bring much suffering to all.

Yes, the stakes are high.

And that means we all need to be working now in our own corners of creation—and one way to do that is to make Laudato Si’ Week a reality in any way possible in our own community, school, business, parish, or diocese.

And if you can’t participate in someone else’s event and you aren't able to lead your own, we can all at least pray and reflect on our own lifestyles, and adapt accordingly. We can all say one Rosary that week, or maybe one Rosary every day that week. In fact, we should all do that, whether or not we're participating in an event.

Wouldn’t it be amazing—and quite powerful—if Catholics worldwide could amass one million recitations of the Rosary in honor of the first anniversary of Laudato Si'?

I’d bet the grace that comes from that would go a long, long way to bringing Laudato Si’ to our world by making it first sing in our hearts.

Visit here for more information on Laudato Si’ Week, and here if you’re interested in becoming a Laudato Si’ Animator.