Poland: Prayers for climate summit held in 10,000 parishes

Prayer cards were distributed to all 10,000 Catholic parishes in Poland,on Sunday, as part of a campaign organised by the Polish Catholic Bishops' Conference, Caritas Poland and Global Catholic Climate Movement, to support the COP-24 climate summit taking place in Katowice.

The prayer cards feature a quote from Pope John Paul II, once the cardinal-archbishop of Krakow, who in his 1990 World Day of Peace Message spoke of the "the gradual depletion of the ozone layer and the related 'greenhouse effect' that has now reached crisis proportions as a consequence of industrial growth, massive urban concentrations and vastly increasing energy needs. ... I wish to repeat that the ecological crisis is a moral issue."

Tomás Insua, from the Global Catholic Climate Movement said the group has worked with the Polish bishops over the past year to raise the issue of climate change and inform Catholics about Francis' encyclical Laudato Si'.

An ecumenical service was held in the Cathedral of Christ the King in Katowice on Sunday, with scripture readings, music, prayers and homilies from the Metropolitan Archbishop of Katowice, Wiktor Skworc, and Swedish Archbishop Anders Wejryd, president of the World Council of Churches (WCC)

Archbishop Skworc referred to the teaching of Pope Francis, saying, from the point of view of the integral ecology postulated by Pope Francis, it is important that Sunday is a day off from work, from trade, from everyday fever, from garbage and waste produced as a result of consumption obsession. We are all witnesses and victims, he said.

The Archbishop of Katowice also asked those gathered to "remember especially in prayer those who are our allies in matters of God and people, those who care about the evangelization of the world, and those who care about the good of our common home."

"Let us also pray for those who are our enemies - open or hidden. In prayer, we learn to look at our neighbour through the eyes of God, and he loves us without any preconditions," he emphasised.

In his homily, Archbishop Wejryd reflected on the roots of ecumenism and the Christian imperative to care for God's creation. "To be ecumenical is all about the house, the household - and the common home. No wonder ecumenism has been so involved in peace efforts and efforts of reconciliation all through the last hundred years", he said.

"We were expected to be stewards, ready to steward not only what is good for ourselves in the short run, but what is good for all what we share, the commune bonum, for the whole ecological weave, for our shared home, for oikoumene," stated Wejryd.

After the service, members of the Catholic ecological organisations participating in COP24 met at the Faculty of Theology in the University of Silesia. During the meeting, Archbishop Skworc stressed that "the times that are before us depend on our decisions and actions taken now." He stressed that one should act in every living space to protect the earth, our "common home."

The floor was also taken by the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN Archbishop Bernadito Auza. He stated that throughout the duration of the Climate Summit in Katowice he hears the word "more."

"We need more commitment, more climate action, we need to be more ambitious - representatives of different countries tell us during the COP24 Climate Summit. And today I want to tell you that you must be "more" involved in spiritual life, that it would bear fruit in the form of "ecological conversion" - said Archbishop Auza.