Daniel del Castillo González
What you’re seeing is not a Mass about the environment. In the gardens of Castel Gandolfo, Pope Leo XIV celebrated the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.
The setting was no coincidence either. The celebration took place at the Borgo Laudato Si’, a project launched in the papal gardens to continue Francis’ ecological legacy.
To understand what the Church celebrates on this day, we have to go back to 1989.
Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I of Constantinople proposed that September 1 be a day of prayer for creation in the Orthodox Church.
More than two decades later, Pope Francis added it to the Catholic calendar as well.
Pope Leo did not begin by talking about pollution or climate statistics. Instead, he spoke about nature a guide for learning to feel and listen.
POPE LEO XIV
Let us put all the noise of human activity on “silent mode” so we can hear the melodious voice of creation, in which God, the author of all things, speaks to us.
This is not the first time Pope Leo XIV has celebrated a Mass specifically dedicated to caring for creation. In 2025, just months after the beginning of his pontificate, he celebrated the first Mass there using the new liturgical formulary “For the Care of Creation.”
It is an important connection in the pope’s thinking: the ecological crisis and the human crisis are not separate problems.
POPE LEO XIV
This contemplative practice, which fosters an encounter with the Lord, is a first step toward an “authentic ecological conversion,” in which the effects of our encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in our relationship with the world around us.
Thus, awareness of our faults and our mistakes gives rise to a renewed commitment to restore relationships among all creatures according to the will of their Creator.
This Eucharistic celebration marks the beginning of the Season of Creation, which will conclude on October 4, when the Church will commemorate the 800th anniversary of the Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi.
The saint who turned the sun, the moon, and the earth into brothers and sisters.
