Ursuline Laudato Si’ Summary 2020 - 2025
11/03/2025
As a Global Community of Religious Women, desiring to move together into a new life, aware of the Calls of our most recent General Chapter (2019), and of the urgency of the cries we hear from the earth and from the poor, we commit ourselves to intentional and active participation in the Laudato Sì’ Action Platform 7-year Journey towards Integral Ecology.
We recognize four particular areas on which we need to focus:
- The need for personal and communal conversion,
- The need for an ongoing deepening of our understanding of the spirituality and theology underpinning Integral Ecology,
- The need for education and ongoing formation
- The need for networking and collaboration
Through our commitment to the Laudato Si Action Platform we will develop these areas and also continue to encourage and support action on behalf of justice and ecological sustainability in our communities and ministries across the world.
(Sr. Susan Flood - March 28, 2022)
Phase 1
A Core group of Integral Ecology Animators (Anastasia Ratnawati, osu; Agatha Linda Chandra, osu; Dianne Baumunk, osu; Elisabeth-Marie Ansart, osu; Mairead O’Regan, osu; Neusimar Marques da Silva, osu; Pam Paton-Mills; Rafael Bianchi; and Teresia Muhuhu, osu) was developed with 2 facilitators (Jacqui Remond, LISTEN; Megan Seneque, LISTEN). This core group is the backbone of on-going work with Ursuline Sisters and collaborators in response to the 2019 Chapter Call to care for our common home.
Phase 2
In-Person Integral Ecology experience with Ursuline leaders at the 2023 EGC focusing leaders on their own story of ecological conversion as well as learning together to become kin with one another and with all of creation.
Phase 3
On-line in-depth series of learning modules (October 2023-March 2024) for sisters and lay collaborators from each province/group: a pilgrimage of ecological transformation focusing on all seven goals of the Laudato Si Action Platform.
- Transformation of our heads, hearts and hands, moving from judgment to curiosity; criticism to compassion; fear to courage, opening to new relationships with others and all of creation.
- “The world will change if we do something together.” (The Letter film)
- Through experience, contemplation and dialogue, Pilgrims traveled a journey of ecological conversion made visible in a culminating visual in each time zone.
Phase 4
Integral Ecological Pilgrims are now Animators in their Province/Group activating a network of support and encouragement through:
- Global Network directory for ease of communication and interconnectedness
- Twice yearly zoom gatherings to grow the global Ursuline Integral Ecology Network
- LISTEN platform for connecting, sharing and learning
- Dialogue Circles called Fire Circles meet online
All aspects of this network are guided by the principle that the future is created one room at a time, one gathering at a time. The goal is for each gathering to become an example of the future we want to create.
Phase 5
Plans are underway for another series of learning modules in 2025 for School Administrators.
A fuller description of these phases of our Ursuline integral ecological journey is available in our detailed Laudato Si’ Action Plan:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wp4fLzTSPbykZK8atZ9DNAlw83vFheA3/view?usp=drive_link
“We must shine with hope,
stained glass windows that shine light into icons,
glow like lanterns borne before a procession.
Who can bear back hope into the world but us..."
Marge Percy