The Jesuit Parish Family Healthy Earth Team is our parish family’s response to Pope Francis’ clarion call to ecological conversion issued in his encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Formed in 2015 at Bellarmine Chapel and re-imagined in 2025 across the Jesuit Parish Family, our mission is to inspire our parish through educational initiatives to connect the tenets of our Catholic faith and the need for action in protecting our common home from ecological exploitation and injustice.
Laudato Si’ Action Platform – April 2026
Visit the “Action Plans” section below to learn more.
Praise Be To You: An Anthology of Hope and Healing for Creation
To commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home our Jesuit Parish Family Healthy Earth Team collected creative works from parishioners at both Jesuit parishes. We invite you to slow down and pray with their creations, reflecting on how God might be calling you to an ecological conversion. The anthology is linked below, along with a video from Dr. Bill Madges, theology professor, and artist Holly Shapker, framing our Catholic vision of hope and healing for creation.
Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God. – Laudato Si’, Para. 84
Care for creation is truly a vocation for every human being. We are creatures among creatures, entrusted with the responsibility to care for all that the Creator has made. ~ Pope Leo XIV
With each passing day, the need becomes ever more urgent to awaken to the climate and environmental crisis before us. Pope Francis calls us to “the moral imperative of assessing the impact of our every action and personal decision on the world around us,” to become stewards of God’s world, compelled to protect and live in just relationship with all people and with the planet itself.
Today’s environmental crisis most especially affects the poor and vulnerable among us. The Jesuits have responded to this dual call–the cry of the Earth and the poor–by affirming Care for our Common Home as one of the four Universal Apostolic Preferences for the next ten years (2019-2029).
In 2025, we became the Jesuit Parish Family Healthy Earth Team, representing members of both Bellarmine Chapel and St. Xavier Church. We are now co-chaired by a representative from each parish.
We divide our work into four focus areas – Pray, Learn, Act, and Advocate – framed by our Laudato Si Action Platform Plan, released in April 2022. This plan helps to inform and organize activities across the parish as we together care for our common home.
All four of these focus areas combine and overlap in an annual series of events, presentations, immersion experiences and prayer services called Embracing God’s Creation.
In Pray and Learn, the team offers reflection series and educational resources throughout the year, especially during Earth Month in April. You can watch a video of one team members’ Earth month reflection here.
Read here our petitions for Earth Day Mass.
Watch a recording of a panel discussion From Waste to Wonder about recycling, reducing plastic waste and the call of our faith to care for creation and live more simply and sustainably.
On the Act front, the team coordinates the NEXUS Community Garden and Urban Farm, a project engaging Xavier students and faculty; parishioners; and neighbors in gardening, community-building, and sharing vegetables for those in need. Approximately 1000 pounds of produce are distributed annually to local food pantries.
Finally, for Advocate, the Team joins partners, such as Faith Communities Go Green; Bellarmine’s own Ignatian Advocacy Team; and Save Ohio Parks to promote environmentally just legislation at local, state and national levels.
Read here a letter describing our recent activities and the way we conduct our meetings.
The Laudato Si’ Action Platform plan is a roadmap for how we will live out our call to care for creation together in the coming year.
- April 2022
- April 2023
- April 2024
- May 2025 (Jesuit Parish Family)
- April 2026 (Jesuit Parish Family)
The fifth Action Platform plan is grounded in our parish family vision “to bear hope and healing,” and organized into four simple areas: Pray, Learn, Act, and Advocate. This year, we have identified a unifying theme: Conscientious Consumption.
Our Healthy Earth Resource Directory answers the question: What can I or we do?
The directory is divided into overlapping themes:
- Family Activities
- Daily Life (Food, Energy Use, Land Use, Consumption/Waste)
- Advocacy, Volunteering, and Financial Support
- Prayer and Scripture
- Learn and Explore