Laudato si and Laudate Deum

A Christ-centered reading of the Gospel of Creation

Abstract

Supported by a “philosophical and theological vision of creation” (LS 130), Francis addresses in Laudato si and Laudate Deum, the problems of the environment, natural resources and ecology, proposing an interdisciplinary dialogue that he illuminates from Faith. The hermeneutical key to his teachings is the centrality of the mystery of Jesus, the Christ, Lord of the cosmos and history, in God’s Project on Creation. The Holy Father severely denounces the ecological damage caused by the errors of the ideological-cultural paradigm of modernity, and announces the truth of the “Gospel of Creation”, which bases the overcoming alternative of the Civilization of Love and this integral ecology. In whose womb the triple relationship of man is restored in Christ, through Christ and for Christ: with God, with other human beings and with the rest of the creatures; and the “ecological conversion” of men and women is encouraged, so they bear witness to the “social” consequences of the Gospel, through a love of Charity at the services of the Care of the Common Home. This allows us to recognize God not only as Creator, but as Father. Father who shares with men his Design, in which Christ -King of individuals and nations- fulfills them now in historical time and then, definitively, in the joyful contemplation of his Trinitarian Face in eternity.