On Nov. 2, the Provincial Ministers of six OFM provinces in the United States released the following statement.
Statement of Commitment to the Laudato Si’ Action Platform
As the leadership for the Franciscan friars in the United States, we humbly and publicly accept the invitation of Pope Francis to commit to the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. The Laudato Si’ Action Platform is an incredible gift to us as we continue the process of joining our six provinces into one coast-to-coast province through our Revitalization and Restructuring Process. Early in our journey to become one, we recognized Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti as guiding documents. The seven goals of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform provide a framework for us to embrace our charism in new ways that build upon our current efforts and elicit creativity for opportunities to live the teaching presented in Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, while also journeying with the larger Church and world.
We recognize that committing to this seven-year journey is committing ourselves, both collectively and individually, to be open to conversion. Such a conversion we hope will enable us to actualize integral ecology and fraternity with greater authenticity.
To take this journey we will adopt these guiding principles:
- Ensure that any listening, discerning and going forth processes built into the Laudato Si’ Action Platform can feed into our efforts with the R & R Process and vice versa.
- Provide adequate institutional support to embrace the Laudato Si’ Action Platform in each of our friaries and ministries.
- All plans and actions should be grounded in the deep active contemplation of our Franciscan tradition and easily related to the values of Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti.
- At each step, we will include friars, friaries, and ministries from each of our joining provinces, and we will continue this inclusion when we are one.
- Appreciate the uniqueness of each of our friaries and ministries. Thus, we will be moving together, even if we are working on different areas of integral ecology and social fraternity.
- Full internal and external transparency of our actions and processes
- Challenge ourselves to embrace the Holy Father’s invitation to “dream big, to rethink our priorities, and to commit to act in our daily life on what we dreamed of.” (Let Us Dream, p. 6)
It is our vision that by the end of our seven-year journey, we will live even more fully in a way that expresses our Franciscan charism in service to the Church and larger society by addressing the emerging challenges of the 21st century. We also hope that our personal and communal footprint on our sister, Mother Earth, will be lighter and sustainable, that our relationships with persons marginalized in our world will be even stronger, and that we have new bonds of fraternity with diverse groups in and outside of the Church.
We commit our six provinces to this journey and invite the leadership of the new province to continue this journey.
Signed on November 2, 2021,
| Fr. David Gaa, OFM Province of Saint Barbara 1500 34th Avenue Oakland, CA 94601-3092 | Fr. Thomas Nairn, OFM Province of the Sacred Heart 3140 Meramec Street Saint Louis, MO 63118-4399 |
| Fr. James Gannon, OFM Province of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary 9230 W. Highland Park Avenue Franklin, WI 53132-8143 | Fr. Mark Soehner, OFM Province of Saint John the Baptist 1615 Vine Street Cincinnati, OH 45202-6400 |
| Fr. Kevin Mullen, OFM Province of the Holy Name 129 W. 31st Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10001-3403 | Fr. Ronald Walters, OFM Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe 1204 Stinson Street, SW Albuquerque, NM 87121-3440 |
Jim McIntosh
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